AGENT OF CHANGE

Gemberling Prepares Little Rock CVB for Next Step

By Dwain Hebda // Photo by Chris Davis

Gina Gemberling has answered to several official titles during her time with the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau: Vice President of Sales and Service, Senior Vice President of Marketing and as of last year, President and CEO.

Leading the organization post-COVID – and therefore tasked with rebuilding convention business, filling local hotel rooms and luring people to restaurants and attractions – she’s also already making a strong case for yet another label: “Comeback Kid.”

“In 2020 and 2021, we were dealing with groups canceling and postponing and that was a lot of our business,” she said. “We were fortunate in 2022 that we only had one convention that actually postponed from early January to March. We were also fortunate the business came back stronger and quicker than we anticipated. Business is not quite back but overall, revenues into our organization are strong.”

Even with the memory of the lost year 2020 still fresh in the minds of the public, it’s hard to quantify the lingering impact of the pandemic on any given industry. Yet, travel and tourism must certainly rank at the top of business sectors suffering the most from that time, as restrictions on gatherings, closed restaurants and bars and an emphasis on quarantine-in-place eviscerated travel and tourism numbers.

The immediate impact was bad enough – a $910 billion hit nationwide in 2020, according to the U.S. Travel Association – with lingering effects and uncertainty threatening to carve a jagged swath through the U.S. economy. For those operating within travel and tourism, the situation became existential as many small businesses that shuttered never reopened for lack of workers. Even travel organizations were not exempt from the Great Resignation, Little Rock CVB among them.

“Unfortunately, during the pandemic we lost many, many employees,” Gemberling said. “All in all, the tourism industry as a whole lost a lot of people who had a lot of good years of experience in our industry.”

As things began to normalize, staffing became a major priority for Little Rock CVB in order to properly manage its many responsibilities and recruit new business. Gemberling said one of the big challenges of her first year as president and CEO has been getting headcount back up to par.

“This past year has been a year of a lot of rebuilding, getting our staffing levels back to where they need to be in order for us to represent Little Rock tourism, manage our facilities and service our customers,” she said.

“It’s been a challenge, but a good challenge. It gave us the opportunity to look at the organization as a whole and see where we have gaps and where we need to be in the future. It allowed us the time to reimagine LRCVB and where we’re going and what critical positions we needed to put in place to get there.”

Gemberling comes to the top spot at the CVB with 34 years in the industry, 24 of them at the Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau in Illinois. There, she held various positions including four years as executive director.

“I grew up in a small farming community in central Illinois, which was about 45 minutes north of Springfield,” she said. “I spent a few years in the hotel industry and then heard about this convention and visitors bureau thing and went to work there as an entry level salesperson.

“My last few years there, we went through a total rebranding. We also, at the time, spent a lot of time on our local advocacy, educating the community on the importance of tourism. We were able to really bring the tourism community together to that one vision, truly believing in the brand.”

Gemberling arrived in Little Rock in 2018 as vice president of sales and service and served in sales and marketing leadership capacities until ascending to the top job last year. She said while she can draw many similarities between Springfield and Little Rock, it’s what differentiates Ar- kansas’s capital city that drew her here.

“One differentiation between us and a lot of convention and visitors bureaus is that we actually manage our convention center, our performing arts center as well as the amphitheater,” she said. “That’s not real traditional for convention and visitors bureaus nationwide.

“Traditionally, convention and visitors bureaus are basically the sales and marketing arm for a destination. Here in Little Rock, we do have that extra advantage in that we are all in this together and we do not have two separate entities managing the sales and marketing efforts in the facilities. It’s one of the things that attracted me and interested me about coming to Little Rock.

“Another thing that really impressed me was the tourism infrastructure in our downtown. Downtown is the heart of most destinations and just seeing all the infrastructure we have, from the Clinton Library to Ottenheimer Hall to the Statehouse Convention Center to both of the major hotels and of course, Robinson Auditorium, is pretty impressive. It says something when a city is willing to dedicate so much time and energy into building that tourism product.”

Heading into 2023, Little Rock tourism has bounced back from the pandemic in most business sectors, Gemberling said.

“The numbers in our buildings for conventions are very strong,” she said. “In fact, attendance in our buildings and our facilities has been almost back in record numbers; in some cases, more than 2019. We also saw the leisure traveler come back – first, actually – at mid-year 2021 through the end of 2021.

“Overall, however, we’re down about four-and-a-half hotel occupancy points and that’s what really tells the story. Hotel occupancy is still trailing a little bit and that includes everything from business travel and leisure travel to small corporate meetings that LRCVB may not touch, but that goes directly to the hotels.”

The comeback effort got a major shot of adrenaline last month with the unveiling of a new travel-and-tourism master plan. Gemberling said the document outlines needed steps and strategies for moving past recovery mode into looking for strong future growth.

“I think we’re fortunate in that we have many, many attractions and things that are our identity,” she said. “For example, the increase in the cycling product here in Little Rock. There’s not many destinations nationwide where you can be in the downtown metropolitan core, jump on the trail and be right there in nature within minutes.

“It’s our job as a destination and marketing organization to package those. How are we positioning the city in front of different audiences? That will be one of our larger selling tactics moving into the future.”

As for her personal leadership goals, Gemberling said she hopes to apply her own unique skillset and sales-oriented approach to expand upon what was built before her.

“Fortunately for me, my predecessor Gretchen Hall built a strong base and a strong bond within the city of Little Rock,” she said. “Gretchen led us through the pandemic, led our organization through one of the toughest things tourism has ever seen, and kudos to her for the job she did.

“One of my goals going forward is community engagement; in fact, we created a position within our marketing division at the end of last year for the purposes of bringing that to the forefront. It’s important to me as a leader to be out in the community, but I also want our entire team out in the community as well to help spread our message and continue to sell the vision of Little Rock tourism.”