Services
All Access Wake County
With the goal of servicing visitors in a destination where “all are welcome,” the Services Department hosted its first day-long, accessibility awareness and training day for staff of area hospitality partners (hotels, restaurants, retailers, attractions and service providers). All Access Wake County hosted more than 150 partners who attended keynotes and breakout sessions.
Servicing successes
Serviced and hosted 346 groups (meetings, conventions and sports). We achieved a 40% survey response rate with an overall scoring of 4.62 on a 5.0 scale, plus hosted 7,942 visitors in the official Visitor Information Center while fulfilling 8,458 visitor requests.
Visitors guide and map delivery service
The Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau's (CVB's) on-demand service remained popular for the delivery of the Official Visitors Guide to Raleigh, Cary and Wake County—410 partners received an impressive total of 37,900 guides at their businesses.
Celebrate Services Day recognizes the role of event services while giving back locally
The CVB's Services and Sports services teams annually participate each Aug. in National Celebrate Services Week, a program put on by the Event Services Professionals Association. While the event “celebrates” event services professionals, we also work together to show the impact we can have by giving back to our community. For our 2019 event, we supported Passage Home Raleigh by collecting donations of school supplies for families who live there.
See for Yourself (SFY) Tours are a great hit (again)
We continued our SFY Tours successfully, with two held in the fiscal year. A fundamental part of services trainings for local hospitality partners since 2013, the tours are well-received destination education programs facilitated by our team. Front-line staffs are the target attendees, and tours focus on the area’s attractions and venues, restaurants and hotels. Our two SFY Tours this fiscal year welcomed a total of 58 attendees.
Visitor Information Center (VIC) highlights
VIC manager Kessa Stevens, CGSP®, represented the CVB at Destinations International’s Visitor Services Summit in Sept. 2019, conducted numerous presentations for local organizations and coordinated the Greater Raleigh CVB Tourism Ambassador program. In Jan., she supported the CVB’s economic development initiatives by providing a visitor information table at an employment recruitment event for Microsoft.
Due to COVID-19 and related impacts, the VIC was temporarily closed in March. A Virtual VIC was launched in late April.
Certified Guest Service Professionals® (CGSPs®)
Guest Service Gold® customer service training classes were held at the North Carolina Museum of Art and at RDU International Airport, resulting in 49 hospitality staff receiving their CGSP® certification.