The executive director of the Lincoln Convention and Visitor’s Bureau is pleased with the way this year is ending for businesses after a very difficult 2020.
“Lodging tax collections as we close the year, I think we’re probably going to eclipse what 2019 was at the end of the year,” Jeff Maul told LNK Today. “And you got to remember 2019 was what we call the last normal year. To know that we’re going to come out where we are is gratifying.”
He says NSAA Volleyball had their second largest ever attended event. The National High School Finals Rodeo, Garth Brooks concert and return of Husker football all brought badly needed dollars to businesses across the city. Maul says they are approaching 2022 with cautious optimism. “We’re going to take the first quarter of next year and get what we can get out of it, because we just don’t know with this new variant.”
He says global industry experts are painting a bleak picture for the convention industry in the coming year. “Events that book big ballrooms at the Embassy, the Cornhusker and the Graduate, they don’t see a 100 percent return of that book of business until the fall of 2022 or the spring of 2023. That’s dark, that’s scary.”
But Maul says whatever is being said globally Lincoln is always months in advance of those trends. “So I am really hoping that by early spring, right in the teeth of summer next year we got our convention business back and really kicking the doors down at our hotels and across the community.”