When businesses don’t bring their conventions and meetings to Los Angeles, the hotel industry bleeds, according to Randall K. Villareal, the newly elected chairman of the Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau’s board of directors.
As chairman, Villareal will oversee a board of travel industry and other business leaders who govern the operations of the city’s tourism promotional arm.
One of Villareal’s goals is to attract new conventions and meetings to the city. “We will be concentrating on the international business markets in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and Germany,” he said.
His duties as chairman go hand-in-hand with his position as general manager of the 683-room Regal Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
Within the next year, the board plans to mount a multi-pronged promotional campaign in those international markets. Attracting conventions and meetings is high on the list, but tourism follows closely behind.
“We want to position Los Angeles as more than just a gateway city, we want it to be a destination city,” Villareal said.
At this time, the typical length of L.A. visitors’ overnight stays ranges between one and three nights. “If we could increase that by one more night, we’d be happy,” he said.
Villareal, who was a member of the board’s executive committee for the past four years before being elected chairman, said another goal is to help revitalize downtown. In that pursuit, he is chairman of the Downtown Marketing Council, vice chair of the Central City Association, and serves on several other association boards.
Villareal also takes time out on most days to get in a five-mile run, and he has run in seven L.A. marathons.
“It all started as a dare, more or less,” he said of his marathon running. “I told my sales staff that if they could win the marathon account and make this hotel the official headquarters for the event (which they did in 1990), then I would run it. They held me to my promise and so now it has become an annual event.”
The Michigan native lives with his wife and four children in Fullerton.
Julie Sable
