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Malvin Gipson
Vice President of Sales, Sports and Convention Services at Memphis Tourism

Q: Before we begin, can you tell me about yourself and your background?

I grew up in Nashville and was very active in several sports, including football and track and field. I was fortunate enough to earn a football scholarship to the University of Mississippi. I was a four year letterman at Ole Miss and received several accolades before I graduated. I’ve always worked in sales but always wanted to be involved in the hospitality industry. I’ve worked with several hotel groups, including the Peabody Hotel Group, Hilton Hotels and the Intercontinental Hotel Group. All of those experiences prepared me for the sports position at the Bureaus. I’ve been with Memphis Tourism for about 16 years now. I’ve always had a sports background and never imagined that it was going to roll over into hospitality. It’s amazing how they relate to each other.

Q: How has your position at Memphis Tourism changed over the past year?

At Memphis Tourism, I had the opportunity to take on increasing responsibilities as Executive Director of the Memphis Sports Council. I was recently promoted to the Vice President of Sales, Sports and Convention Services position. I’ve also kept the same responsibilities as Executive Director with the Memphis Sports Council. As you know, it takes a lot more responsibility because we combined two positions and now my responsibility includes conventions, the convention center, trade shows, meetings, and bringing in new business for the Renasant Convention Center which services the Memphis and Shelby County region. 

Q: I heard at a previous MMHLA board meeting of how you are trying to bring sports back to Memphis to drive hotel room nights. Can you fill me in on the details and how this is affecting the hotel industry?

As you know, when the coronavirus hit us back in March 2020, everything was shut down. In May, we started opening things back up in the hospitality market, especially on the youth sports side. What we started doing was reaching out to the CDC and the Shelby County Health Department because they wouldn’t allow us to gather in groups of any more than 50 and host any youth or amateur sporting events. We were probably the first organization to host a youth baseball event at GameDay Baseball. We met 

with Dr. Bruce Randolph with the Shelby County Health Department. He came out, we walked through the complex and we talked about all the protocols, the safety procedures and the 6 feet of social distancing and how we were going to operate the tournaments as we hosted the events. So we wrote out all the protocols we would be following and presented it to him to ensure that everything was properly followed. Over Memorial Day weekend, we held one of the first if not THE FIRST youth and amateur sporting events in Memphis and Shelby County. We had 156 teams, and it was very successful. For about 10 consecutive weeks we worked very closely with the health department. It was a big boost to the industry to have 156 teams consistently come in for 10 consecutive weeks starting Memorial Day weekend. Before then, we only had the leisure business coming in – which had been greatly diminished. Hosting these sports tournaments helped to save jobs and generate much needed revenue for the hotel industry. 

Q: How did you build the trust with the health department? Because in light of these new COVID-19 restrictions, building trust with the health department is going to be crucial for the restaurant industry going forward.

The key to it was at the Memphis Sports Council, I have counterparts in other cities and destinations that are sports authorities, sports commissions and sports councils and so we were on zoom calls almost two or three times a week trying to figure out how to get the youth and amateur sports back up and running. We started comparing notes with different destinations and different cities and we started looking at the safety of the attendees. We started looking at the protocols of the attendees and we said, “Okay, what is it going to take to convince the health department that we understand what we are looking at with this pandemic?” Then we came up with many different scenarios that were being discussed across the country. For instance, just to give you an idea, when we had a team leave, we didn’t have another team come into the gates until the other team had already left the complex. We also had ten foot circles throughout the complex where there could be only one family or one group within that circle. All of this employed the six feet of social distancing. We had sanitizing stations throughout the park where they could wash their hands. So what we did is we practiced all the necessary protocols that the Shelby County Health Department was using here and also that the CDC was utilizing across the country. We put those in the youth and sports environment and took advantage of that. So what we were trying to do was to put those actions in place to make sure that we followed all the necessary protocols and went over and beyond what was needed for safety. 

Q: What future bookings have you succeeded in bringing to our soon to be finished Renasant Convention Center and what is the outlook for the future? 

As we all know, this is a tough year in hospitality and we’re trying our best to bring events into the new Renasant Convention Center. We were having a banner year in 2019 moving into 2020 – the best year that Memphis Tourism has had that I can recall. Our numbers were huge, and we were booking business and bringing clients in. 

In March of 2020, everything changed because that’s when everything was shut down. It’s a day that I will NEVER forget. In the first six months of 2021, there were a lot of big events that were postponed or canceled. For instance, we were set to host regional finals for the NCAA basketball tournament for March 2021. The NCAA decided to run the tournament out of Indianapolis. We have to be looking toward 2022, 2023 and 2024 for our bookings. We’ve already rebooked the NCAA for the first and second rounds of 2024 and that’s at the FedEx Forum downtown. For that, we’re partnering with the University of Memphis and the FedEx Forum. 

There are other big groups in Memphis like COGIC. We have them coming back for the next three years which is right at 20,000-24,000 room nights per year. And there are also other events we’re working on such as Memphis Metro Volleyball. They’re scheduled to have their event the last two weekends in January 2021. We’re hoping that having the actual vaccine will give more incentive for the corporate groups to book. At this point in time, corporate business is probably going to be the last business to come back. Smith Travel, which makes predictions for the market, is projecting that the marketplace as a whole is scheduled to at least start coming back with positive numbers by Q3 of 2021, but for the corporations, we are probably looking at 2023 or 2024 to get back to 2019 levels. On the other hand, Memphis is scheduled to bounce back faster than some of the other destinations. Because of that, we’ll have a big opportunity to bring back business to Memphis. We have the sales managers going to trade shows, Connect Sports and Conference Direct. They are getting requests for proposals and we’re bidding on a lot of events at this point in time. Again, we’re hoping that the vaccine is going to give confidence to the meeting planners to book events. We’re moving full speed ahead to continue to book events in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Q: Could you elaborate a little more on the current outlook and plans for the future?

We had several big groups –AutoZone, the Southern Cotton Ginners Association, the American Contract BridgeLeague, NATE, and many other groups that were booked with us in the fall of 2020 and the spring of 2021. These groups would normally book thousands of room nights but have cancelled their bookings. However, because of the current environment and lack of confidence, they don’t want to put their people at risk. Looking on the positive side, I traveled to Orlando and Las Vegas to meet with the meeting planners at Conference Direct, and the meeting planners made the statement that corporations, employees and attendees are ready to travel. They said if we had a vaccine and everything was under control, then they would have traveled YESTERDAY! So that is promising. I feel that as soon as we can have confidence in the meeting market, we’re going to have a great opportunity to take advantage of that corporate business coming back. It’s just going to take a while to come back.

We are still marketing and advertising the Renasant Convention Center. We are heavily promoting our updated center. When the businesses come back, we have to be in front of the meeting planners. We continue to promote the 

destination, because at this point in time, leisure business is driving our occupancy rate. With our occupancy running around 51.6%, that’s what we’re trying to push at this point in time. Leisure travel is going to be a big factor right now to get us through a lot of the challenges that we’re facing. We’ve focused some of our marketing efforts on travelers within a 600-mile radius of Memphis to attract more leisure visitors. Chief Marketing Officer of Memphis Tourism Regena Bearden and her staff have been diligently working and producing a variety of marketing campaigns to attract more travelers. 

Q: What sort of advice do you have for working through the challenges COVID-19 has presented to sales teams in the tourism and hospitality industries?

What I tell my team is that we always have the basics to accomplish. For this, I always lean back on my sports background. For instance, I can have a game plan and I get ready for a team and in the middle of the game, my plans are not working. So, what do I do? I go back to the basics.

In this industry, I call my meeting planners, my corporations, and my clients and keep in contact with them because I had to change the game plan in midstream since it wasn’t working. So what I always tell my team is that we can do the basics well. We can get on the phone and we can call and say, “Hey Mary, how’re you doing? What does it look like as far as your office? Do you think you guys will be traveling soon? When do you plan to get back out in the marketplace?” So, what we focus on is we do all our research, we do all our calls, we go back four or five years to see what groups hadn’t booked with us and it gives us a great opportunity to update all of our information. When this coronavirus subsides to where we can get back out into the marketplace, we’ll be ready to go because we will have done all our basics and homework to move forward. You can always put a game plan together with the smartest coach in the NFL, college or whatever, but if I’m playing an opponent and the opponent is the coronavirus, that means I have to come back with a different game plan to overcome the challenges that I know I’ll be facing down the road. The challenge is trying to figure out how to get meeting planners in your destination. So what do you do? You have to do the basics that you’ve done over the years. That and MORE to reach the meeting planners and find out what’s on their minds and what they’re working with. So that’s just something that I like to talk about because it always settles the team down and keeps the team motivated and moving forward. It’s an easy analogy for the team to understand.

Q: To end on a lighter note, what are your favorite sports teams?

That’s a tough question because I have so many. On the collegiate level, I do follow my alma mater, Ole Miss and I pull heavily for the U of M Tigers. Those are my top two. I’m a big SEC fan and follow the SEC heavily. Now on the professional side, I love my Titans up in Nashville, so I follow them and also Seattle and Tampa Bay. Now for the NBA teams, I like the Pelicans and Houston. So I guess other than sports teams, the professional golfer I pull heavily for is Dustin Johnson. I also like Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Justin Rose.