Newport Beach has become her destination

Travel has been part of Marta Hayden’s life since she was a child.

She has traveled the world, taken classes upon the sea and worked in

travel-related industries her entire career. So it’s no wonder she

accepted the job as the new executive director of the Newport Beach

Conference and Visitors Bureau.

Hayden is filling the spot left by John Cassady, who abruptly

resigned in May. The bureau has about 250 businesses as members, a

board of directors and an annual budget of about $1.5 million. Its mission is to promote Newport Beach as a vacation and business

destination.

Hayden took a moment last week to discuss her background and her

plans for the future of Newport tourism with Features Editor Jennifer

K Mahal.

What got you interested in travel?

Probably with my father’s occupation. He ran an import-export

company, so we traveled as young people, very early on. My father

came from Spain -- he’s Spanish and French -- and had relatives still

in Europe, and so, he’d go back there. But mostly it was his

business. We would go and buy various things and meet all these

people and go to wonderful cultures.

Tell me a little about your background in the travel industry and

how you came to be where you are today, as executive director.

This is going to be a kind of a fun story too. We also had a home

in Hawaii, where my father lived. And so, of course, tourism is a big

part there. And as a 16-year-old, as soon as you could go to work, I

was working in a restaurant as a hostess, working in a hotel, doing

all these things. I went to school at various places, and I ended

graduating from the University of Hawaii in the hotel school, so I

worked two years in the industry there.

And even though chronologically I wasn’t that old, I had a lot of

experience for it. So I got a wonderful management position with

American Airlines, who ran Sky Chefs, the airline catering people.

They also had a hotel division, and as part of it, when they were in

a growth position, I went out to interview people to come to work at

our hotels.

[After a job in Cincinnati and one in San Francisco] I worked in

Monterey. You’re going to see a strong family connection, because I

am very connected to family. You’re going to also think my father is

a gypsy, with all the homes we’ve lived in.

He lived in Pebble Beach, also. And he happened -- I had already

been working for [Airport Plaza Inn] for some time and he happened to

see the job advertised for the Monterey Conference Center.

Monterey is a very upscale community, similar to Newport Beach.

There’s so many parallels here. So, he saw the job in Monterey and he

circled.

So I went through the interview process, got the job, which was at

the time a risk to hire a woman. So back to Newport Beach, again a

friend saw this advertised and there were so many parallels with

Monterey and my work experience and an affluent, beautiful community.

I researched it pretty thoroughly before I came. I knew some of the

people that worked here.... I knew several of the people in the

hospitality community and they gave me a background. I thought my

skill sets matched it very nicely, just being active in the group

market whereas Bridget [Lindquist, deputy director] is very active in

the travel industry, it would be a wonderful complement to join the

team.

Not everyone knows what the executive director of the conference

and visitor’s bureau does. What does your new job entail?

In a small bureau like this, everyone has to sell. So this is a

heavy marketing and sales background. My role is to do more of the

administration and interface with the board, volunteers who are

representatives of the community and get consensus from them. Also, I

serve at their direction as to where we’re going to be going with the

product and enable sales people to be out, interfacing with our

clients.

At the same time I working at the sales aspect, I’m working with

Gail [Ossipoff] in communications that we’re getting our message out

to the media and getting the most we can. So we have so many people

doing various tasks, the sales, the communications and media, the

administration portion of it, working with the local community. And

this particular position is very community involved, where we’re in

things that I’m evaluating the programs and saying is this the right

use of our resources.

And it’s really looking at , having almost the bracelet that says

“Does this make revenue?” If it’s political, I can justify going too,

I mean obviously. But looking at our mission statement and saying,

does this match our mission statement? Is it budgeted? Can we afford

it? Third thing, is it ethical? Then, we’re involved in it.

I think in the most successful organizations, one of the most ones

was the turnaround in the Girl Scouts, and they stayed so focused on

their mission statement. If it didn’t match their mission statement,

they didn’t do it.

Is there a particular city in which you have seen the conference

and visitors bureau really make a difference and would like to

emulate in Newport Beach?

Monterey is a reference, of course. We have our own associations

of the bureaus -- the International Assn. of Convention and Visitors

Bureaus and the Western Conference of Convention and Visitors Bureaus

-- where we get a lot of resources, as far as salary surveys, job

descriptions, the right marketing plans, a lot of how to’s. But

there’s very good things as far as looking to emulate what would be

best practices at other bureaus.

I can’t say there’s an ideal bureau because of difference in size

and budget, but we’d all have to take our hats off to New York after

9-11. They came in, they got the message out, worked with their

members, they came back under really difficult situations. As far as

disaster preparedness, I think they’ve done an excellent job. And

there’s some best practices we can take from there and say “do we

have a plan?” I don’t think we have a plan for disaster preparedness.

I’m still a new person here. There’s different parts and that’s what

I’d like to glean. To look at that and say is that applicable here,

can we improve?

There’s lots of things we’re doing excellent. But people don’t

know it. We’re not our best promoters. That’s part of what I’d say

from knowing the staff. I’ve got a chance to interview all of them

and get to know them.

What are some of the things the bureau does excellently, but

people don’t know about?

I can cite Laura [Van Winkle], for example. I think she does a

great job. She’s been working on our corporate market, which has been

hit very hard at this particular time. And she’s taken the initiative

and really done some very creative marketing. I mean with e-mails and

working with our partners putting together something that was asked

for by the partners and she took the initiative. We’re going to

Philadelphia on an outreach for clients. We have to be proactive, we

can’t wait for the clients.... She’s done just marvelous things.

Another aspect is Gail and communications. We get so much in print

by her cultivating the media, that she does a great job. And that, I

think the average citizen may not see that, if they’re not traveling

and getting the New York Times and seeing that something is getting a

pick up.

And the satisfaction of our industry partners, our hospitality

people are just -- I’m out there talking . The same time I’m talking

to staff, I’m talking hospitality people and the same time I’m

meeting them, I’m also talking to the board. It looks like we’re on

very harmonious tracks, which is exciting.

What I’ve been asking the board is: Why are you on the board?

What’s your expectations of us? And if we were the perfect bureau,

what would we look like three years or five years from now? And not

focusing here, what do you want to see us look like if we’re doing

everything right?

Some of the responses have been: be more proactive and get out

there, get out and start working on the next quarter. Be more with

the technology, so we’re going more electronic. But always being

sensitive to those members who have no e-mail and such.

We’re changing the look to be more contemporary. Challenging us to

say you’ve been doing these things the same way and yes they’ve been

successful, but let’s take a risk. Let’s go in a magazine that’s

nontraditional or let’s try a new program.

It’s a very exciting time. The momentum is fabulous, I have to

say.... I met with the city. Our city partners, who are just

unbelievable. I mean they understand the business, they understand

the value of it, they want to cooperate. I see us doing more

partnerships with them.

One of the things, not maybe in the first year, would be the

start-up of an event. But you can’t do that without resources and

without a great relationship with the city.

What do you see as some of the biggest challenges that the bureau

faces in marketing Newport Beach?

Let me use Monterey as an example. In Monterey, we dealt with a

certain niche in the market -- because there are so many parallels --

we could take larger groups because of the conference center. What we

didn’t have in Monterey was an airport. We had an airport, but no one

knew we had an airport because in the code sharing they all knew

about LA and San Francisco.

Here, just a for-instance challenge, is maybe not having a large

convention center for bringing in larger groups where we have multi

housing and hotels. We have a wonderful airport that connects

everywhere, which is a plus side.

Having said that, that means that market is not probably going to

be available. We have an option, and that is to think creatively. To

partner with the Dunes and to get a certain segment of the industry

that will meet in a tent, which are not [like] camp at all. You have

to be creative. If you don’t have a large assembly hall, then we have

to provide other ones and look for the market. But there is a big

enough one that we can look for groups of maybe 300 to 500 that are

either self-contained or one and two hotels and know that the whole

world’s not there.

And then if that’s the group, what’s their income level and who’s

our competition. How are going to best target?

The other one is a perception problem. And that we have to dispel

through advertising. We don’t want to discount the image of Newport

Beach, but there’s the thought that we are too expensive for some

groups.

We’re not too expensive. We can be affordable with the right

circumstances. There is flexibility in winter, there’s flexibility

surrounding holidays in the group market.

So it’s getting that out, that we’re affordable. We have an

airport. We have a great infrastructure around us. Knowing who the

neighbors are and working with that community. We have a really big

business community out there. We have a favorable city council, low

crime. That’s a big issue now, that you’ll be safe here.

Why do people come, they want to go to beaches. We have great

beaches. Shopping is No. 2 or 3 on the list. We have Fashion Island.

And it’s really, who has time when we’re working [to go shopping]?

But when we’re at a conference, all of a sudden, we have some leisure

time and we can go out. I always get a kick when people say, “I

bought this on vacation.”

So it’s getting all of these wonderful mosaic pieces that make up

the jewel that we have, and making people aware of it.