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Chicago CVB faces major challenges with 50% staff turnover
The Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau has been faced with massive staff departures and sagging morale as it faces intensifying competition nationwide.
In the two years since CEO Jim Reilly left, 43 employees have quit the bureau, including ten senior executives. Frustration with outside hires, bypassing insider promotion, is reported to be a cause for some to quite in the 75 to 80 people workforce office.
The departures come at a critical time. The bureau, which books space at McCormick Place, has seen its workload increase as it is also marketing the $882 million West Building addition scheduled to open in mid-2007, reported Chicago Tribune.
Tim Roby, a hotel sales and marketing executive, will be taking over the helm of the bureau next month.
But industry sources say some actions by the officers of the bureau’s board have contributed to the exodus, reported the Tribune. The officers include three hotel executives, Saunders, of Hyatt, Thomas Loughlin, of Hilton, and Michael Cassidy, of Starwood, as well as trade show services veteran John Patronski and restaurateur Phil Stefani.
Most galling to some staffers has been a perception that effective veterans were either pushed out or pushed aside and replaced with outsiders who did not have experience in the trade show business or in marketing a major destination.
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