Why Irving, Texas, Excels in Wellness and Hyper-Personalization
Visit Irving Executive Director Maura Gast explains how this Dallas Metroplex meetings destination is making strides in wellness and its skill at hyper-personalizing its meetings offering for planners and attendees.
From leading-edge wellness programs at its major resorts—and even opportunities at the Irving Convention Center at Las Colinas—to the DMO's skill at meeting hyper-personalization, this Metroplex draw is expanding its allure from its traditional corporate headquarters and entertainment center offering.
Listen:
Related: How Irving, Texas, Excels in Its Wellness Offerings for Groups
This episode is sponsored by Visit Irving Texas.
Transcript:
Editors note: The following transcription was facilitated by AI program Otter.ai and proofed by our editors. Although it is very accurate, there inevitably will be some mistakes, so please consider that when reading. Thank you.
Tyler Davidson
Hello and welcome to this Meetings Today podcast.
I'm Tyler Davidson, vice president and chief content director for Meetings Today and really happy to be joined today with an old friend and real credit to the meetings industry. Maura Gast, the executive director for Visit Irving. Thanks for joining us today.
Maura Gast
Thank you, Tyler. Always happy to be with you.
Tyler Davidson
And likewise, and then today I think we're going to talk about a couple subjects that maybe seem not related but are kind of related in the end: The wellness offerings around the Irving area. And then one thing that was really interesting to me, the hyper-personalization of events that you guys do.
Maura Gast
You bet. You bet.
Tyler Davidson
Yeah. I mean, let's kick it off with Wellness.
I know the whole Dallas Metroplex has sort of an image of it's kind of an iconic, historic cowboy destination, and then definitely a huge banking and commerce center, and now, and especially in Irving, a real center for entertainment, also.
Maura Gast
Yeah.
Tyler Davidson
But I never really associated it with wellness offerings, and that is a topic that is so important in the meetings industry today. And then doing some research for this podcast, I discovered a whole wealth of wellness offerings.
Are there planners asking you about wellness programs, and what do you guys offer?
Maura Gast
You know, I think it's just something that's on everybody's mind these days, whether you're in the industry or not. There’s just so much more open conversation, I think, about wellness everywhere you look, and it's something for everybody.
So, I think you start to see that filtering in and I think over really the last 20 years or so certain hotel brands have really taken on ownership of wellness for their guests.
I think you see event organizers and meeting planners trying to figure out: “OK, how do I deliver that? How do we make offerings for our guests to take advantage either of the venues where we are or the climate where we are.” All of those things. And I think you know—you mentioned earlier when people think about Dallas, Fort Worth and the Irving area—you know, you're either thinking about, you know, that Western heritage or the urban business center kind of thing. And this area is all of those things, but this area is also a lot of green, a lot of nature that people don't necessarily realize is here.
Within minutes of the convention center, there's a promenade around the lake that touches several of the hotels, and walk across the street from the convention center, and you can be on that beautiful promenade. You get to the far side of the promenade and you can be along the Campion Trail that runs almost the entire western border of the city.
When it's complete, it's 22 miles of trails that connect to other trails throughout the region, and those are trails that people are walking on or biking on or dog walking on, and then you find in some places you're in this—this is my architectural term of the week for you, because of the Elm Fork of the Trinity River that comes here, you have this riparian corridor, which really means just kind of a riverfront setting. But there's some spots along the trails where you forget you're in the middle of the big city or a big urban area.
Tyler Davidson
Mm hmm.
Maura Gast
And there are beautiful white cattle egrets and blue herons that are coming in and out of there, and you're just in this whole other space.
So, making those events and opportunities accessible to our guests, taking advantage of the weather here—like everybody everywhere else these days, maybe it's a little unpredictable—but you know, taking advantage of outdoors and patios, and so many of our of our hotels and restaurants and venues have those to offer, to get people outside to do things that are on a giving back mode. That might be cleaning up the trails or might be doing things along the way. Or, you know, there's volunteers that have built these butterfly gardens, doing those kinds of things.
Tyler Davidson
Mm hmm.
Maura Gast
So, I think it is easy to get to the nature side of wellness without having to try very hard to do that. And then, I think you just have a lot of the hotel brands in, our case, at Westin and Omni and Ritz-Carlton, are doing as companywide, brand-wide initiatives that says this is who we stand for.
They make it easy for you. It’s OK if you forgot your tennis shoes; we will provide them for you. You know the fact that there is even a thing such as goat yoga blows my mind like yoga.
Tyler Davidson
Right. I was gonna mention that.
Maura Gast
Yeah, yoga seems difficult enough.
Tyler Davidson
Yeah, for sure, right?
Maura Gast
You know, heated Pilates workouts seem difficult enough without throwing goats into it.
Tyler Davidson
Right!
Maura Gast
But you know what? If that's what it gets you to do it and it's hard and then we all have, you know, all the crazy wearable things now that are, you know, that in theory are reminding us that ‘you've been sitting still too long, get up and move.’
Tyler Davidson
Yeah.
Maura Gast
You know, I see a lot more speakers and panels and programs that say, you know, we've been sitting here too long, let's stand up and stretch. And what a difference that makes for your brain…
Tyler Davidson
Surely.
Maura Gast
Techniques like sometimes you're locked in a meeting or in a desk, or for me, like at a City Council meeting all day long and, you know, goosing yourself to just, say, take a minute to go outside the room to walk outside; to step outside into the beautiful spring weather and just clear your head. Staring at a screen all day is not good for any of us. It's a fact of life.
But man, every once in a while, even if the weather's not great, getting outside and just changing your literal and figurative point of view makes all the difference in the world. I am horrible at taking care of myself.
Most of us don't do a good job of it, but trying to sneak in those little wellness wins. It’s got to be something we do, and you and I have been around for a long time now.
Tyler Davidson
Yeah. Yeah.
Maura Gast
And you realize every year—at least I do—how many more miles we put on our body.
Tyler Davidson
Right.
Maura Gast
And how, you know, these are fine machines. They may not look like fine machines anymore, but we have to keep them tuned up. In some ways, it's little things like taking the walk around the block, and sometimes it's take 10 minutes to walk around the exhibit hall of the convention center.
Tyler Davidson
Well, you guys have even kind of marked routes to walk in the convention center, right?
Maura Gast
Yeah, just to get your steps in, and it is one of those things. You can have your pedometer on, or your wearable, and you know how many steps you have at the end of the day.
But even just walking our exhibit hall; you know that if you do the lap around the hall, if you can just do six laps, that's a mile. And for folks who are trying to really keep their steps up and be intentional, including our staff, you know, running up and down and back and forth serving guests, it certainly puts a lot of miles on. But just taking 10 minutes on a Friday morning if the hall's empty, or if there's a load and we can work around and just walk, you know, 10 minutes to do a couple laps and we've all gotten a mile in; those are easy things to do.
And how do we make it easy for our guests to do that? We've got beautiful exterior patios and staircases here at the convention center. We've got people that live in the area that are constantly running the stairs; it's a really good workout for them because the treads of those stairs in some cases are three and four feet. So, it's a really good stretch.
Tyler Davidson
Mm hmm.
Maura Gast
We see a lot of the police officers doing fitness runs and things, and a lot of the residents that just come and run them because it's a good workout.
Tyler Davidson
Yeah, right, I think I see them when I'm coming in in the morning from the night after, maybe?
Maura Gast
Yeah, yeah, maybe that's a different thing; straggling home.
Tyler Davidson
Well, and then here’s something sort of related because you know, hyper personalization could definitely include wellness and probably often does. But why?
Maura Gast
Absolutely.
Tyler Davidson
It's a fascinating topic. Explain the idea of hyper-personalization in regard to meetings.
Maura Gast
You know, I think for us, especially when you're a little guy, you have to try harder to get attention, but also to understand— I really believe that every group that comes in here, whatever their event is, it is a Super Bowl for them and we should treat it like it is their Super Bowl.
You know, when the Super Bowl was coming to this area back in 2011, [this region] jumped through hoops to do and to produce to make sure that experience was exceptional. That was the NFL Super Bowl, but every client of ours, if it's their annual meeting or a shareholders meeting or product launch, those are Super Bowls for them.
So how do we understand what makes the nature of that meeting special or distinct? And then how can we use our talent, our treasures, our time, our connections to build on that for the customer?
The more we know about why the meeting is happening, the more we can fine-tune what we can offer. We’ve all got a slate of convention services offerings we can give people, right--here's the basic list.
Tyler Davidson
Yeah.
Maura Gast
But every group is kind of an Etch A sketch moment, too, to say what matters most about this meeting.
Tyler Davidson
Right.
Maura Gast
What are you trying to accomplish? How can we help you? Would you like a welcome from our mayor? Can we help coordinate a 5K charity run for you, and have the police chief and fire chief go off and be the pace cars?
Understanding what the group's trying to do, and then because we're small, because we're nimble, because we're very interconnected with the community, how can we, you know, one up what they're expecting and really make it customized. How do we make sure it's special?
We do name badges for people all the time. We do whatever they want on it—you know, often the Irving name gets lost in it…But over time, people really want a different kind of name badge. They want their logos on it, their stuff on it.
So, we don't worry about our logos so much anymore, right?
We just make sure that that thing is important to them. Making sure that the folks always assume they're volunteers—our convention services staff members that we provide—making sure that they know why the group is meeting, that they know the the nature of the meeting, the nature of the people that are in attendance, so that we can think about what those people might need, want out of their experience.
Trying to do more of that really on the front end of the sales effort when we're bringing clients in for site inspections or for property tours or visits; really kind of going back to old school things. It really is, Tyler.
It's the things we did before the Internet was there to do it for us.
I feel like before Canva…understanding what makes a difference, what will leave a lasting moment in a really good way. Because often people, for site visits, they're not coming just to Irving, they're gonna look at 20 or 30 properties and possibly five or six destinations while they're here.
How do we make what we do stand out when 10,000 square feet is 10,000 square feet, is 10,000 square feet?
Tyler Davidson
Right.
Maura Gast
How do we make those things happen?
Across the street from us, Wells Fargo is getting ready to open later this summer, and they'll bring 5,000 employees onto this campus. And we had one of their employee relations people come over because they're looking at doing some community building things before they're able to move into the building, and so they're gonna do backpacks for the Irving Schools Foundation. They're gonna bring about 250 employees here and build 1,000 backpacks. It is based on the school's foundation's needs.
They can't get into their building yet, but we have a bird's eye view of the building on the patio at the convention center, so when she came in for the site visit, our marketing team just created a frame—a picture yourself here kind of thing—and had her pose with it, with their new offices in the background, so that she could share that with her team. When she goes back, of course, it's a simple little thing to do, but she was so excited that we thought about that.
We're like, “This is the view your people are gonna have.”
You're not gonna be able to get in there yet, and we did lots of other things, but we've got screens all over this place. How do we use those screens to welcome people to tell messages? How do we incorporate things that we know are their things and how do we deliver it in a way that says this we're listening to you. We hear you.
And that is the best way for us to set ourselves apart. Space is space.
Tyler Davidson
And it's all about communication, really.
And then, knowing who your client is and establishing that relationship is another.
Old fashioned. High tech, but high touch, right?
Tyler Davidson
Right.
Maura Gast
And I think, you know, even going back to the fundamentals of what a CRM system is, the word the R is the most important piece of that; the relationship, you know, making sure that our high-tech tools that we use for communicating that everybody in the organization knows who the client is, why the client is here, why it matters, what we're trying to accomplish while they're here. All of those little kinds of things that in every moment, and in every touch.
Give all credit to Disney, right? They want to make sure that every element of the experience is what you want it to be, and I think we can never stop learning from Walt, what Walt built. What are the little things we can do that collectively make a difference. At the end of the day everybody wants to be seen and heard and felt, you know. So how do we make sure that what we deliver on that? We've just added our post-event meeting planner surveys that we've been doing for decades, but here in the convention center, ASM just added—I don't know how many touch points there are.
There's iPads as well as QR codes throughout the building for attendees in the moment to have input, which is very different from the meeting planner post-event “how was your experience?” This is attendees in the moment.
Are the rooms too hot? The rooms too cold? The food was good? The coffee's out? Our staff can respond to that, at least on the building side, in real time, often before the word gets to the meeting planner that the coffee ran out sooner than expected.
Our staff is monitoring those things and making sure that we're quickly responding.
Tyler Davidson
Well, it really sounds like you have a great handle on your relationships, both with the planner and the attendees, both old fashioned and newfangled with technology.
Maura Gast
Yep, we try.
Tyler Davidson
Well, thank you. And you did a great job with our Meetings Today.
LIVE! program that was just there.
Maura Gast
We had so much fun. That was so much fun.
Tyler Davidson
I know, I heard all about it. I couldn't attend, but I enjoyed reading about it.
Maura Gast
You were missed.
Tyler Davidson
Thank you for being such a great host for that.
Maura Gast
Yeah. Our pleasure. We had such a great time with that event and we'll look forward to the chance to do it again.
Tyler Davidson
Excellent. Well, thank you for joining us today, Maura.
Maura Gast
Absolutely, Tyler. Thanks so much. Be well.
Tyler Davidson
You, too.
That was Maura Gast, executive director for Visit Irving. I'm Tyler Davidson, vice president and chief content director for Meetings Today.
Thank you for joining us for this Meetings Today Podcast. And if you're interested in other podcasts we do with thought leaders in the meetings and events industry, head on over to MeetingsToday.com and check out our handy-dandy Podcast section where you'll find all those.
Thank you for joining us today. And no matter what you're up to with the rest of it, go out and make it great.
