Administration
 

• Worked with the City of Raleigh and Omni Hotels to finalize a hotel booking agreement to ensure the future Omni Raleigh Hotel will hold rooms and offer competitive rates for groups wanting to book the convention center. This is the first time Omni has ever had a booking agreement.
   
• Worked closely with the Raleigh Convention Center (RCC) and hotel partners during the fire recovery to preserve 34 of the 35 events by moving them to other dates in the first quarter of the year. This amounted to approximately $4 million and 28,000 hotel rooms.
   
• Created a comprehensive three-year sales, marketing, communications and public relations plan supporting the RCC expansion and new downtown hotel package with the opening of the Omni Raleigh Hotel.
   
• Hosted a Restaurant and Retail Summit to discuss their needs and ways the Greater Raleigh CVB can assist them and with what we are doing with marketing and PR initiatives.
   
• Hired Jones Lang LaSalle to help us identify and market to national hotel developers. Worked with all 12 municipalities to assist them in creating consistent marketing packages and addressing common elements developers want from prospective communities. Ultimately hosted 35 hotel developers for a one-day appointment-based program, which allowed them to meet with all 12 municipalities. Created a special website to allow our municipalities to update their key information and for developers to easily find available hotels site throughout the county.
   
• Worked with City of Raleigh and Wake County staff to create an RFP for distribution of $23.5 million. A joint decision between the Wake County Commission and the Raleigh City Council for $15.5 million and the remaining $8 million to be determined by the Wake County Commission only. Created evaluations criteria for the evaluation committee to use when scoring the proposals. Received and reviewed 22 submittals for requests totaling $75.7 million. Ultimately recommended 12 projects located in nine municipalities across Wake County for a total of $23.5 million. The Raleigh City Council and the Wake County Commissions approved the recommendations of our committee.
   
• Implemented Corpay Complete which is a flexible platform for managing payments, expenses and approvals in one place and integrates well with NetSuite, our enterprise resource planning system.
   

^{Pictured: Omni Raleigh Hotel rendering and Hotel Development Summit}
 

Awards:

• Greater Raleigh CVB received the Meetings Today 2025 Best of Award, an annual recognition bestowed to the top destination marketing organizations in North America, selected via voting by the publication's audience.
   
• Won three major N.C. Travel Industry Association Tourism Achievement Awards at the N.C. Tourism Leadership Conference:
  • Platinum for 2024 Annual Meeting (Community Stakeholders category);
  • Platinum for the digital Raleigh Beer Trail (Technology and Innovation Award);
  • and Platinum for the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball First and Second Rounds (Special Event Marketing category).
• Named a 2025 Travel South USA Global Champion Destination for our work with the MICHELIN Guide American South.
   
• Received the 2026 Global 100 Award for “Best Leisure, Travel and Tourism Business of the Year”
   
• Won the 2025 Smart Stars Award and named "Best Smart (Academic) CVB/DMO" by Smart Meetings magazine readers.
   
• Received the “Award of Excellence” from Corporate & Incentive Travel magazine.
   
• Acacia Blair, administration and human resources manager, received the Society of Human Resources Management Certified Professional (SHRM-CP) credential.
   
• Maria Lopez, sales manager, received the Tomorrow’s Leader award at the Meeting Professionals International Carolinas Chapter (MPI-CC) 2025 Annual Meeting.
   
• Kathryn Short, national sales manager, received the Supplier of the Year award at the MPI-CC 2025 Annual Meeting.