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B M & T ••• March/April 2014 ••• www.blackmeetingsandtourism.com 4 Solomon J. Herbert Publisher/Editor-In-Chief E-Mail: BMandTMag@aol.com Black Meetings & Tourism is published bi-monthly by SunGlo Enterprises, 20840 Chase St., Winnetka, CA 91306-1207 •Telephone: (818)709-0646/Fax: (818) 709-4753 Copyright 2014 by SunGlo Enterprises. All rights reserved. Single Copies, $6.00 Subscriptions $45.00. Postage Paid at Pasadena, CA. •Postmaster send address changes to Black Meetings & Tourism, 20840 Chase St., Winnetka, CA 91306-1207 . New Orleans, decided to place less emphasis on multicultural tourism in the Fort Lauderdale event. It was also a result of an impromptu meeting at the 1995 conference in Fort Lauderdale where a small group of delegates, huddled in the hospitality suite of the host hotel, birthed NABHOOD, the National Association of Black Hotel Owners, Operators and Developers. Despite this noble effort on Ingraham's part, the New Orleans show continued to face financial challenges. So a decision was made by the board to take the show on the road where the hope was it would attract more sponsors. If memory serves me correct- ly, in subsequent years it convened in San Antonio and in Washington, DC. And while the conference continued to provide valuable information and educational opportunities for attendees, changing the location of the event had little or no effect on gener- ating additional revenue. At that point in time, Melvin Tennant, who along with me sat on the New Orleans Multicultural Conference board, was also on the Meeting Professionals International Board of Directors. With our options running out, Tenant suggested that the MPI might be willing to make the conference a track of its annual convention. Rather than see the New Orleans conference die on the vine due to lack of funding, we reluctantly agreed to turn our conference over to MPI. For several years it served as the diversity track of their annual conference. But that didn't last long, and eventually the effort was discontinued. Another gathering, called the African American Travel Conference, was later established, that as far as I know, is still up and running. It is my understanding that garnering enough spon- sorship dollars was never an issue with this new conference. Ironically, however, the problem was that none of the people who organized, planned, implemented or owned the conference were people of color. I was at their first conference, and needless to say, I was shocked. So you can understand why I am so excited to report that the first International Multicultural & Heritage Tourism Summit & Trade Show is on track for July 18-20 at the Miami Marriott Biscayne Bay Hotel in Miami, FL immediately following the NAB- HOOD conference at the same venue. We have come full circle with many of the same players, including Andy Ingraham, NAB- HOOD president/CEO, Toni Rice, current president of the Greater New Orleans Multicultural Tourism Network, as it is now called, Black Meetings & Tourism, and the Greater Fort Lauderdale CVB, among others, joining forces to breath life into this much needed conference. If the multicultural market is of any interest to you, you can't afford to not be there! O ver the years, several attempts have been made to hold a multicultural tourism conference to address the needs and concerns of this important and ever growing market segment. Back in the 1990s, the Greater New Orleans Black Tourism Network, as it was then called, headed by Caletha Powell, launched a multicultural tourism conference that met with some success in the Crescent City. The conference had a fair- ly decent run for half dozen years or more in New Orleans, offering valuable workshops and seminars that helped educate industry practi- tioners about the buying, traveling and prefer- ence patterns of this burgeoning niche and the best ways to penetrate it. The only problem was the conference always struggled to find enough sponsorship dollars to underwrite the cost of presenting it, and consequently never allowed it to become sustainable. Around the same time, a smaller multicultural tourism conference was also being held in Fort Lauderdale, organized by Andy Ingraham and his Horizon's Marketing Group International, of which he is president/CEO. A confluence of events changed the course of that conference in 1996, when it evolved into the first International African American Hotel Ownership & Investment Summit & Trade Show. On the one hand, Ingraham, not wanting to compete with the already struggling conference in PUBLISHER'S MESSAGE •pg_3-11.qxp__BMT_pg3-58 5/20/14 5:39 PM Page 4