by Karen Brune Mathis
Managing Editor
Daniel O’Byrne has rented a temporary home for his family, found schools for the children, made one official speech and expects to have a new car by this time today.
The new president and CEO of Visit Jacksonville marks a month on the job a week from now.
Reflecting on three weeks with the title but years of competing against Jacksonville during his years in Orlando, O’Byrne said Tuesday he has an initial request for the community.
“My plea to the people of Jacksonville is to get involved,” said O’Byrne, a 51-year-old with almost 30 years of hospitality, marketing and meeting planning experience.
“In order for the hospitality community to be successful, we have to rely on the people of Jacksonville,” he said.
O’Byrne said most everyone is a member of a group or has friends and family out of town. Inviting those groups and people to visit in Jacksonville is a basic way to boost, perhaps in a sustainable way, tourism for the city.
And that, after all, is what Visit Jacksonville does.
Visit Jacksonville was formerly known as the Jacksonville & the Beaches Convention and Visitors Bureau. It is the official destination-marketing organization for the area and its mission is to create visitor demand.
The Downtown-based organization, with 23 employees, reports that its mission includes creating demand that results “in measurable economic growth for business partners and contributes to the quality of life and economic viability of the Jacksonville economy.”
O’Byrne succeeded John Reyes, who resigned March 19 to join the Monterey Convention and Visitors Bureau in California as president and CEO.
Hired in September, O’Byrne’s first official day on the job was Nov. 8, although he traveled to Indianapolis in October for the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce Leadership Trip.
On Tuesday, O’Byrne talked about his experience and early expectations.
First, the experience.
Having grown up in New Jersey, O’Byrne earned a bachelor’s degree in 1980 from the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
He spent his first three professional years at Deloitte, Haskins & Sells in New York City as a meeting planner.
O’Byrne then joined Westin Hotels & Resorts from 1983-91, in capacities that included national sales manager for the Walt Disney World Swan property in Orlando.
In 1991, he became director of the Tishman Hotel Corp., which, among its extensive portfolio and activities, owned and managed the Westin Rio Mar Beach property in Puerto Rico.
He also had oversight of marketing and sales functions at hotels in Florida, New York City, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and other areas, including at Tishman-owned hotels in Orlando.
In 1998, he became vice president of Tishman in Orlando and was director of marketing and sales for the Puerto Rico resort, country club and villas.
In the meantime, he also married and had two children and earned a master’s degree in applied economics from the University of Central Florida.
With a growing family and the need to cut back on the frequent travel, influenced at least psychologically by 9/11, O’Byrne joined the Little Rock Convention & Visitors Bureau as chief marketing officer in 2002, becoming CEO in 2005.
When the opportunity arose in Little Rock, O’Byrne and his wife, who is from New York City, first said, “where?” and then said “sure.”
In Little Rock, O’Byrne ran the $16 million bureau with 120 full-time employees and operational control over the majority of the Arkansas city’s tourism assets. In November 2004, the city completed the opening of the $165 million William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park.
“What we went there to do is done,” said O’Byrne. When the call came to ask about an interest in the Jacksonville job, he was receptive.
The recruiter asked. “He said, ‘what about Jacksonville, Florida?’ I said, ‘yeah, really cool.’”
O’Byrne knew the area to a degree.
“I had competed against Jacksonville when I was in Orlando,” he said. In 2004, he visited Jacksonville and experienced its extensive and energetic preparations for the 2005 Super Bowl.
Now, the early expectations and observations.
He soon noticed that the “Beaches” was no longer in the name of the organization, but he knows their value, considering Orlando didn’t have any.
Also, the Super Bowl energy has waned, but the area’s many attributes remain. “None of it has really changed,” he said. “It’s all still here.”
And now he’s here to sell it.
O’Byrne said the fundamentals of the industry are the same in every city.
The differences are in understanding the specific markets that a city serves. For example, take the Jacksonville areas of the airport, Southside, Beaches and Downtown. Each, he said, attracts and serves different visitors, customers and potential travelers.
“All of those submarkets make it a richness of diversity or complexity,” he said.
“That complexity makes it fun.”
O’Byrne is familiarizing himself with the area, including the people, places and things that make it what it is. One longtime issue is the City’s effort at deciding where, how and why to build a convention center.
O’Byrne said he understands there is a commitment by City leadership to explore development of a convention center and said he’s supportive of “anything that makes us more competitive.”
His official duties so far included outlining the organization’s key initiatives for the next year at the group’s “Destination Outlook” annual meeting Nov. 10, saying Jacksonville needs a new convention center and cruise terminal and the hospitality industry needs more funding to gain greater exposure for the destination and “keep up with the competition.”
O’Byrne said then that Visit Jacksonville will mount a campaign among the 43,000 local hospitality industry workers to register them to vote in the spring mayoral election and educate workers about which candidate will “protect our jobs, families and interests.”
Over the next month, O’Byrne’s wife, a first-grade teacher, and his children, a 16-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter, will move to Jacksonville into the Southside home he’s rented while they decide where to buy, preferably close to Downtown and schools.
Son Danny hopes to attend Bishop Kenny High School and daughter Katie is headed to Assumption Catholic School, which occupy adjoining sites along Atlantic Boulevard in the St. Nicholas area.
O’Byrne turns 52 on Dec. 19.
He also intends to accomplish the involvement with citizens.
“It’s really that we’ve begun to re-engage more directly the entire community of Jacksonville in the destination marketing efforts in truly what is one of America’s great cities,” he said.
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