GREATER COLUMBUS CONVENTION CENTER CELEBRATES CITY’S SUCCESSFULLY HOSTING ASAE 2019 ANNUAL MEETING & EXPOSITION AUGUST 10-13

(Columbus, August 26, 2019) — The SMG-managed Greater Columbus Convention Center (GCCC) joins the entire Columbus hospitality community in celebrating the record-setting successful hosting of ASAE: The Center for Association Leadership 2019 Annual Meeting & Exposition from August 10-13.

Known as “the Super Bowl of meetings,” the event attracted 5,476 attendees, including 2,625 executives and 1,866 exhibitors, along with 985 others, including guests, spouses, press, vendors, and staff.

The sold-out exposition hall featured 710 booths representing 445 companies, with an almost even ratio of buyers to sellers. The Classic, the ASAE Foundation’s fundraising event to support its programming and research, featured Ohio-born singer John Legend and attracted the highest attendance and revenue in the event’s 13-year history. The Closing Celebration concert on August 13 featured country singer Brad Paisley.

Additionally, the community rallied to provide 600 volunteers during the event. They established a warm welcome for attendees from the moment they landed at the airport to their being enthusiastically applauded by a tunnel of facility employees as they emerged from the Battelle Grand Ballroom closing keynote event. The GCCC employs the city’s largest contingent of Certified Tourism Ambassadors.

“We’ve never seen 600 volunteers for our event before,” confirmed interim ASAE President and CEO, Susan Robertson, CAE. “The City of Columbus and the Greater Columbus Convention Center went above and beyond to provide our attendees with a stellar experience.”

Traditionally, 20 percent of association executives attending the ASAE event then book their own meetings in the host city over the next five-year period or so. This is a potential opportunity for $500 million in future revenue for Columbus.

“We are so proud of the way our city welcomed and hosted the ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition,” said GCCC General Manager John Page. “It is now our mission to continue the momentum by inviting these executives to book their own events at the GCCC and then providing them with the same level of service excellence they enjoyed during their introduction to Columbus.”

Based in Washington, D.C., ASAE, The Center for Association Leadership, represents organizations and individual association professionals from a variety of economic sectors and professions and provides opportunities to build knowledge, enable learning, foster community and engage in advocacy for its members. A membership organization, ASAE is composed of more than 46,000 association executives and industry partners representing 7,400 organizations. Its members lead, manage and work in, or partner with, organizations in more than a dozen association management disciplines, from executive management to finance to technology. Together, they create a vibrant community that makes the world smarter, safer and better every day. With support of the ASAE Foundation, a separate non-profit entity, ASAE is the premier source of learning, knowledge and future-oriented research for the association and non-profit profession and provides resources, education, ideas and advocacy to enhance the power and performance of the association and non-profit community. Visit www.asaecenter.org for more information.