精东影业

Cleveland鈥檚 tourism bureau says it wants to convince visitors to come back to town鈥攁nd stay here.

Destination Cleveland announced the new push at its annual meeting Tuesday night. CEO David Gilbert said his group wants to sell visitors on picking Northeast Ohio for the long haul.

鈥淗ow do we target those people that are coming here, through data, and really being very strategic, partnering with other organizations,鈥� Gilbert said, 鈥渢o turn those people into new residents, new talents coming into Cleveland, new investors in our community, potentially new students.鈥�

In a news release, the organization said it wants to attract conventions and meetings that line up with local industries.

鈥淲e鈥檙e in this interesting, unique position that we鈥檝e battled all these perception issues, and by far the No. 1 way to change that is to actually have people come here,鈥� Gilbert said.  

Last October, in 2017, according to a survey by Tourism Economics. That was a 2.3 percent increase over the prior year, the group said.

Destination Cleveland is funded largely by the county鈥檚 hotel bed tax. In 2017, the organization committed a portion of that money鈥�$44 million over 18 years鈥攖o renovations at Quicken Loans Arena.

As part of the deal, the county canceled an earlier agreement that Destination Cleveland would help pay off the construction of the convention center and Global Center for Health Innovation, .

Gilbert acknowledged the arena project payments do have an impact on the bottom line as the group plans for its future.

鈥淲e operate like a business, and like any business, when you have less to spend, it鈥檚 hard to have the same results,鈥� Gilbert said. 鈥淏ut in the end, our job is to do the best with what we have.鈥�