Industry thought leader and president of Associated Luxury Hotels International (ALHI), Michael Dominguez, recently described his take on our industry’s path forward as needing to be decisively indecisive. By that, he is suggesting we need to become comfortable with perpetual uncertainty and the inability to nail down the new normal.

Michael’s take is understandable considering the overwhelming amount of data that is available for us to make business decisions, amid an elusive pandemic. Our industry continues to be confounded by efforts to clearly find our path forward.

The good news is that there are numerous signs we are finding ways to live with our current pandemic. For example, TSA checkpoint traffic continues to approach pre-pandemic levels and event organizers are increasingly anxious to make destination and hotel decisions.

Our Meet Minneapolis team finished the year strong and epitomized the message we delivered at our 2021 Annual Meeting of “Resiliency and the Road to Recovery.” As difficult as the work has been, we’ve continued to press on to help all of us recover.

To support that mandate, on Dec. 15, our board approved an aggressive three-year recovery plan designed to:

• Grow Meeting Planner and Event Owner Confidence

• Increase Meeting Attendee Confidence

• Influence Leisure Travel

• Enhance Destination Development

We will share details of this plan in the near future and welcome your feedback. The plan contains a number of fundamental sales and marketing activities that our team will continue to implement in 2022. In addition to those essential activities:

• We will work closely with our metro area and statewide partners to advocate for Tourism Recovery and Improvement District (TRID) enabling legislation.

• Along with several key business association partners, we will undertake a reputation management initiative, which is not meant to rewrite our recent history of community unrest and social awareness. Instead, in the words of our SVP of Destination Branding and Strategy, Courtney Ries, those tumultuous events are a part of our story, but not the only story.

• On the sales front, we will continue to replenish our team and look to have additional sales team members located in key feeder markets to enhance our presence.

• To ensure we maintain our focus on equity and inclusion, our board has authorized the creation of an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion department within our organization. This team will be deployed within the first half of 2022.

We hope this quick overview of our team’s 2022 plans will give you continued confidence in our ability to lead the destination recovery that we need.

Happy New Year and thank you for your continued support.