Conventioneers go treasure hunting
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Conventioneers go treasure hunting
Published: March 6, 2008 12:00AM
Teams of conventioneers will set out on a treasure hunt in downtown Eugene on Saturday. But instead of hauling picks, shovels and pails, they’ll be carrying Global Positioning System, or GPS, receivers, pocket PCs and digital cameras. And the treasure hunt will be used to introduce them to the city’s galleries, shops and landmarks.
These conventioneers are members of a profession prized by tourism officials: They are meeting planners, who can steer thousands of dollars in business to a community.
More than 300 meeting planners from Oregon and Washington are registered to attend the Meeting Professionals International Cascadia Educational Conference convention.
“This is a great opportunity to showcase Eugene and Lane County to key decisionmakers” who’ll be selecting sites for their conferences in coming years, said Lisa Lawton, the association’s community relations director.
Last year, the 198,006 delegates who attended conventions held in Lane County generated an estimated economic impact of $40.5 million, Lawton said.
That figure is expected to grow in the future. Convention bookings from July 1, 2007, through December 2007 were up 157 percent from the same period of 2006, she said. A big piece of that was bookings associated with the 2012 U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials and the 2009 and 2011 USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships, Lawton said.
This weekend, small teams of meeting planners attending their trade association’s annual educational conference will travel around Eugene, locating actual and virtual caches, racking up points to win prizes.
Geocaching, in which players hide and find containers, or caches, usually holding a log book and trinkets, has become a worldwide past time. It took off seven years ago after technological advances to handheld GPS receivers made them accurate to within 30 or 60 feet, instead of 300 feet, said Michael Connolly, a representative for Geoteaming, a division of Playtime Inc., which is based in Seattle.
He and his wife JJ are organizing the geocaching activity for the Meeting Professionals International Cascadia Educational Conference.
Geoteaming has set up these treasure hunts for groups all over the world, including Microsoft, Adobe and REI, Connolly said.
It turns the typical walking tour into a high-tech, team-building, interactive experience, he said.
Participants will be shown how to use the equipment before they’re set loose on a two-hour adventure, Connolly said.
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