This is another in a series on area executives and political and community leaders who have played prominent roles in the development of Downtown or Jacksonville as a whole over the years. Some are still in the area, working or retired or a bit of both. Some have moved away and are working in other areas of the state or country. The series continues with Kitty Ratcliffe, former president of the Jacksonville and the Beaches Convention & Visitors Bureau.
by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
What she did:
President, Jacksonville and the Beaches Convention & Visitors Bureau
What she’s doing now:
President, St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission
Kathleen “Kitty” Ratcliffe arrived in Jacksonville in 1997 to take over the Jacksonville and Beaches Convention & Visitors Bureau (now Visit Jacksonville!). Since then, a recurring theme in her career is to be on the move.
“I came to Jacksonville over the 4th of July weekend and I remember the first thing I had to do was find new office space for the CVB. We were housed at that time at the Chamber of Commerce, but it was growing so fast they needed our office space,” she recalled.
Ratcliffe found a new address for CVB headquarters on East Adams Street and that lasted about four years, then it was moving day again, this time to the Flagship Bank Building on Water Street, now called the “550 Building.”
Her sales personality showed when it was time to build out the office space. Ratcliffe said everyone on the staff was sure she’d claim the panoramic view of the Northbank and Southbank skylines on the southeast corner for her office, but Ratcliffe said she had a better idea.
“I said that’s where we were putting the conference room because that’s where we would bring guests when we were selling Jacksonville,” she said.
In 2004, she was offered a job at the New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau and at first declined, but Ratcliffe said after she met a CVB executive from the “Big Easy” at a convention in Minnesota, she began to seriously ponder the opportunity.
“New Orleans is a one-of-a-kind market with a very good base of convention business. I realized they were talking about all the things I couldn’t do in Jacksonville.
“When I sell a convention it gives me a rush of adrenaline I never got with (selling) leisure travel,” said Ratcliffe. She then added, “and I didn’t see Jacksonville changing.”
Ratcliffe moved to New Orleans, set up operations in the convention bureau’s vice president’s office and started selling convention business. Then came Hurricane Katrina.
“It was interesting,” said Ratcliffe. “The entire staff was evacuated but we went back to work the day after the hurricane from wherever we were.
“I got a call from a colleague in Dallas and they offered me office space, so that’s where I worked for six weeks. We all worked remotely, but we discovered we could do much more than we thought we could.”
After a month-and-a-half, the New Orleans CVB staff reunited at their office where they, “started to contact our clients trying to save business,” said Ratcliffe. “New Orleans’ tourism industry was pretty much intact because the tourist areas weren’t severely damaged, but the neighborhoods where the service workers lived were badly damaged. Even so, the hospitality industry pulled together. It was the most rewarding eight months of my life and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
The next call came from the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission, where Ratcliffe began her career in convention sales. The organization was about to realize the benefits of a four-year plan that built $3.5 billion worth of downtown improvements around the America’s Center convention complex.
She said the largest city in Missouri now offers everything a convention planner could want including plenty of hotel rooms and lots of things to do while visitors are in town.
“We have 500,000 square feet of exhibit space at the convention center with 8,000 hotel rooms downtown and 35,000 rooms in the region. St. Louis is a fun city,” said Ratcliffe.
Even with all that, she said it’s great to come back to Jacksonville several times a year to visit friends and catch up.
“It’s really impressive to see the new condos along the river Downtown. Every time I go back to visit Jacksonville, I always think, ‘what a great little airport. What a beautiful community.’”
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