How is a City’s tier determined?
By
Lisa N. Scott, CMP
Convention Services Manager
Buffalo Niagara CVB

No doubt many of you have heard that cities fall within various tier’s? Teir 1, 2, 3, and so on. But have you ever stopped to wonder how it is determined what tier your city falls into?

After contacting the International Association of Convention & Visitors Bureaus (IACVB), I received the following information:

“The classification of tiering that the industry has used in the past is very subjective and there are no standard definitions. Common determinants used in the past to classify a destination into tiers included:

• Capacity – number of hotel rooms; size of convention center; amount of meeting space
• Affordability – citywide rack rates; per diem costs; cab ride costs from the airport
• Amenities – pre/post meeting and after hours attractions and entertainment; size and reputation of hospitality industry; and
• Accessibility – number of flights into/out of destination; size of local airport; number of enplaned passengers; distance of hotels to convention center.

If one were to use a quantifiable determinant, then the number of hotel rooms in a city’s core would be the yard stick by which to measure what tier a city falls into. It makes sense to assume that a city with a large number of hotel rooms, also has easy accessibility to and from its airport, has a number of attractions and entertainment for visitors, and an abundance of meeting space.”

IACVB requested information from CVB’s asking them to provide information on the geographic boundary that provides funding for the Bureau. Is it a county? A parish? Is it one or two? How large is it? This information along with the number of hotel rooms within that geographic boundary was used to determine a city’s tier.

ExPact – the abbreviated name for the Convention Expenditure and Impact Study, is designed to standardize event industry economic impact calculations and to provide an updated measure of the impact of the convention and meetings industry. “For purposes of the ExPact study project, the standard geographic unit selected was the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) which is a measure established by the U.S. government (Census Bureau). In many cases, an MSA is one or multiple counties. Tiering criteria for U.S. destinations has been established for the ExPact project as follows:

Tier 1 - More than 30,000 hotel rooms within a Metropolitan Statistical Area
Tier 2 - Between 10,000 and 30,000 hotel rooms within a Metropolitan Statistical Area
Tier 3 – Less than 10,000 hotel rooms within a Metropolitan Statistical Area

E.g. the Buffalo CVB is funded by the bed tax collected in Erie County (our MSA). We have 10,000 available hotel rooms, therefore, Buffalo is a 3rd tier city.

The mystery of tiers has now been solved!

 

 

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