NAMM is Coming to Austin

Austin lands music convention

Austin struck a chord with the International Music Products Association, making a musical connection that helped land a three-year trade show gig, the city's biggest convention booking ever.

The nonprofit Carlsbad, Calif.-based association announced Monday that it will rotate its summer trade shows among different cities, bringing it to the Austin Convention Center in July 2006. The event is the nation's second-largest trade show for musical instruments and products -- a $16 billion industry worldwide.

NAMM has as it's members over 7,700 retailers and manufacturers of musical products. The trade show, assuming it'll be open to the public, should be quite interesting to tour through.

With more than 20,000 attendees and nearly 550 exhibitors, the show has outgrown facilities in Nashville, which has hosted the event for the past 11 years.

Nashville, which decided not to expand its convention center, will host next year's event but will lose the $21.8 million show after that.

Association officials said they like Austin for several reasons: a spacious convention center, Austin's "fun, vibrant downtown" and its "passion and dedication to live music."

"Your city truly values live music and people who play live music, so our values are very similar," association spokesman Scott Robertson said.

The booking is more evidence that Austin's $110 million investment to expand the convention center is paying off.

It's too bad the Austin Convention Center isn't privately owned and independently operated. I'd rather support entrepreneurs trying to make a profit than another branch of the city government using resources that are better left in the hands of the private sector.

The bigger center already has helped attract several major conventions. They include the National Council of La Raza, which brought 5,000 attendees in July and $6.3 million to the local economy, and the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which is expected to bring 6,000 people and $6.5 million next year. In 2006, the World Congress on Information Technology, a biennial meeting of tech and government leaders, is expected to pump about $20 million into the local economy.

The Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau has bids on 40 to 50 conventions that would bring 5,000 to 6,000 attendees each and generate as much as $250 million for the local economy between 2004 and 2010, said Cynthia Maddox, a spokeswoman for the visitors bureau.

And that's wonderful. But it'd be even better if the tens of millions of dollars (PDF, page 458) the ACC recieves was left in the hands of taxpayers. More than half (51%) of the Austin Convention Center Department's budget comes from the "Bed Tax" (PDF page 474) of nine cents per dollar hotels charge for room occupancy. This sucks more than $26 million out of the economy.

It is a nice convention center, though.

Posted by Drizzten at November 04, 2003 08:57 AM