Q&A With Bob Murdock of Destination Worcester
NAME: Bob Murdock
TITLE: Director of Sales, Destination Worcester
HOMETOWN: Greenwich, Conn.
RESIDENCE: Worcester
EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree, Bucknell University; master's degrees, Bucknell and Springfield College
If you run a hotel, restaurant or tourist attraction in the Worcester area, Bob Murdock is thinking of you. As director of sales for Destination Worcester, he's on point to attract major events to the city that can help bring tourists to the region to spend their money here.
Tell me about your role.
What I really am is a facilitator. I help bring meetings, events and trade shows to the city, and then help people who are here put on events. Our mandate is that we're an economic driver for the city. We're trying to bring people from out of town who are going to spend a night at the hotels, eat at restaurants and spend money.
You scored a coup recently by landing the 2012 U.S. Rowing Masters National Rowing Championship - a summer sporting event to help balance the big upcoming winter events. How big a deal is this for the city and region?
I think it's a really big deal. It's a slower time of year for the hotels, the restaurants. Having 1,800 participants and their families come to the area is big. Otherwise, there are a lot of hotels and restaurants that would be quiet in Central Massachusetts. It's a great event on its own. But at that time of year it makes it even bigger for us.
What would you say are the organization's most notable successes over the last four years?
There's really two ways to gauge the impact of events in the city. If you were to say "What's your ideal event?" one would be a large number of participants or attendees to come to the city so that you're filling hotel rooms (and) restaurants and having those people stay over multiple nights at a hotel. The second key element that I look at is exposure. We had the USA Gymnastics' Tyson American Cup here in 2010 live on NBC for two hours. It's sort of hard to buy that kind of exposure for your city. And that was a great event hotel wise, probably 600 or 700 room nights.
What would you say is the easiest selling point for the city?
It really depends. I'm selling to all sorts of different groups. Things that I really push if I'm selling to groups are location, the amount of people that live around Worcester and our pricing. We're a much more affordable market than a Boston or even Providence now. It's really affordability, access and that we are a city.
What's the toughest selling point?
There are some things that I wish I had more to sell. We don't have a lot of hotel rooms here. That can be trickier because, for (the U.S. Synchronized Skating Championships in March at the DCU Center), we have rooms (booked) out in Marlborough because we don't have that many rooms in the city. That's probably one of the hard things. When the commuter rail (expands service), that will help because people who fly into Boston will be able to get here easier. People who want to go to Boston in their spare time when they're here for a conference with their families can do something (in Boston).
What impact has the economy had on your work? Have some groups pulled back spending?
I don't think the economy affected Worcester as much as other cities. Sports goes on regardless of the economy. That's been a good driver for us. The second thing is that we tend to get a lot of New England events. We're a pretty strong, regional market. When the economy sort of went down, it seemed like less people were going to the national shows but more people were coming to the regional shows. So I didn't really see much of an impact on business for us. The hotel room nights might not have popped up as much because one thing about being in the center of New England (is that) people can drive here, but then they can also drive home.
Earlier this year the MetroWest Regional Tourism & Visitors Bureau officially launched, which upset some people in Central Massachusetts because they believe it could take funding away from this area. Does MetroWest have an impact on Destination Worcester and its efforts?
I don't see (where) that would really have much of an impact on us. We're really Worcester-centric, so it doesn't really matter what exactly they're doing in MetroWest. It may affect us a little but in that we try to draw some of those people to Worcester but it's more about who has the availability in meeting space to fit whatever that group is. There's so much business out there for meetings and events. There's enough stuff for everybody.
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