Ron Price, president and CEO of the Arlington CVB, has been instrumental, along with Bob Jameson, president and CEO of Visit Fort Worth, in bringing big events to North Texas in recent months, including the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. Price shared insights with The Meeting Professional.

How has your destination responded to hosting some major national events, particularly the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, college football games and the World Series?

Arlington’s 2020 story is a bit different than some other destinations, but the real effects of no or limited travel on our tourism community and economy was very much the same. 2020 wasn’t in anyone’s business plan. We quickly saw the impact of COVID-19 on our community just as everyone else did. Our response was not to write off 2020, but to do whatever we could to find small wins and build from them.  

By early summer, Arlington’s COVID numbers were not as severe as in other parts of the state or country and we had the ability to hold events (as long as they met the capacity guidelines along with certain other requirements such as being in an open-air venue). As the virtual school year was coming to a close, an opportunity to utilize our three professional sports venues (AT&T Stadium, Globe Life Field and Globe Life Park) to hold graduations surfaced. These venues had the ability to effectively spread out the students and their families, making the most of the vast space. In working with state, county and our city’s health agencies, the venues developed and implemented health practices to safely hold these graduations. With this ability to social distance in a healthy environment, graduation demand grew.

We learned from each graduation not only how to safely distance people once inside the facilities, but also staging and distancing guests on the outside when the students and families were arriving and departing. Since the outbreak of COVID, the venues had invested in the latest sanitation tools to clean the stadium to exceed to CDC requirements and staff was trained to maintain a healthy and clean environment. Arlington hosted over 60 graduations from the DFW region.

By having the ability to open up our professional sporting venues to fresh air (both AT&T Stadium and Globe Life Field have retractable roofs and Globe Life Park is open air) and practice the health and safety protocols in place, we found that we could effectively hold other events based on current state-issued guidelines. We soon had success in bringing in several amateur sports organizations in the summer and realized that sports could be our silver lining. 

“As COVID took hold across the U.S., we quickly established a goal amongst our tourism community to become known as a safe destination.”

The (Major League Baseball) season was under way but without fans (MLB’s decision). Arlington was still considered a safe and healthy city as our COVID numbers were relatively low and our healthcare facilities were not stressed. Our current situation allowed us to create our own bubble or safe zone for incoming ball teams playing the Texas Rangers. Our safe zone offering became more popular with visiting teams and garnered the attention of MLB.  

The big win was MLB selecting Arlington to be the home of post-season baseball, which included the Divisional Series, Championship Series and World Series. The work that went into successfully hosting these events was a team effort, but I give much praise to the Texas Rangers ownership and leadership.  

We had just under a month to prepare for post-season baseball and learned that there was a possibility of having a limited number of fans at the World Series, so we went to work to prepare for that scenario. The Rangers did an incredible job of putting the right health and safety policies in place and working with the various health officials to allow fans. All of the learnings from hosting high school graduations to smaller sporting events with limited attendees went into developing our plans to welcome fans to Arlington for the first time this baseball season.  

The outcome of hosting post-season baseball, including the World Series, was 163,000 visitors over the dates of Oct. 4-28, made up of players, support staff, media and spectators. More importantly, hosting this event put people back to work in Arlington.

Once MLB announced their decision on Arlington in September 2020, we started to receive inquiries from other larger sports organizations interested in Arlington and our team went to work finding sporting events around the country that were still looking to compete.

The Wrangler National Finals Rodeo (NFR) soon chose to host their 2020 event at Globe Life Field in Arlington for December. This would turn out to be the largest event we held in 2020 with over 225,000 visitors over a span of 10 days. In order to host the NFR, we would need to partner with one of our sister cities in the region, Fort Worth, due to the size and scope of this event.  

Soon after announcing the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, we were excited to announce that the PBR (Professional Bull Riders) World Finals would be held at AT&T Stadium in November. PBR welcomed over 42,000 visitors to Arlington.

Arlington was also fortunate to host previously scheduled events that welcomed a limited capacity of attendees with the Dallas Cowboys football season, UIL Texas High School Football Championships, the Dr Pepper Big 12 Football Championship (over 18,000 visitors) and the Goodyear Cotton Bowl (over 17,000 visitors).

The final event that came to Arlington was the Rose Bowl (over 18,000 visitors). We were honored to be a vessel so that this game could be played and carry on a wonderful tradition.

Can you share some data, such as economic impact, total number of hotel room nights, etc.

Total number of visitors from those eight events (not including Cowboys) since October: 486,000

Economic impact from MLB, NFR, PBR, Rose Bowl: more than $155 million.

Arlington hotel occupancy rates: October, 61 percent; November, 49 percent; December, 55 percent.

Are you working to bring the NFR to the region from Las Vegas?

The NFR is an incredible event that fits well in Texas. We would love to host this again in Arlington/Fort Worth.

How have you managed safety protocols, including tracing?

In early March 2020, we formed a COVID task force led by Mayor Jeff Williams, including our city manager, office of emergency management, several city leaders and myself. Our goals were clear and the first and foremost priority was the safety and well-being of our community.  

As COVID took hold across the U.S., we quickly established a goal amongst our tourism community to become known as a safe destination pertaining to the health of our destination, associates and visitors. Looking back, I am still very impressed with how our tourism community came together. We have constant communication sharing the latest information pertaining to COVID data, health and safety protocols, traveler data and future opportunities.  

In addition to our hotels and restaurants, the Texas Rangers, Dallas Cowboys and Six Flags Over Texas (amusement park) all went above and beyond the recommendations made by the CDC to ensure the safety of their staff and visitors. The City of Arlington also took action and became the first city in the U.S. to be GBAC certified as a city, with 23 city facilities receiving the certification.

Through every event, both city and county health officials worked closely with the venues and monitored for any outbreaks and had tracing technology deployed. Procedures included wearing of masks, constant cleaning, sanitization stations, social distancing and separating attendees in pods while seated.

What have learned from hosting these events during the pandemic?

I learned a lot during 2020. The thought of hosting one event during COVID much less the number of events we hosted, especially early on when we didn’t know the trajectory of COVID, was a scary proposition.   

Leading through that fear and working closely with our colleagues from the governor’s office, local health officials, industry partners and the community was enlightening and reassuring. We learned from every event and continued to build upon what worked and improved on what needed improving. Safety was our top priority, and we made it clear early on that we were ready to back out of any event where we didn’t feel confident that we could control a safe environment.  

Take every small win as a victory. Those small wins increased our confidence in being able to safely host and our knowledge in how to do so. Small wins quickly became larger wins.

Our successes in 2020 were a result of everyone working together, from the governor, owners of our professional sports teams, city and county leadership, the CVB and our incredible industry partners. We had the same goal in keeping our community and visitors safe while keeping our economy moving.

The end result is that our tourism industry did succeed in Arlington. We proved that we could have a safe and healthy environment to hold scaled-down events and put our incredible tourism employees back to work. We are a long way away from where we were pre-COVID, but we will continue to do our part to rebuild our industry one visitor at a time.  

Ron, thanks for your time. Any final thoughts?

Hosting the events has given us confidence moving into 2021. We’ve continued the implementation of health and safety protocols and taken the learnings from hosting larger events at our professional sporting venues to hosting smaller hybrid events at our state-of-the-art Esports Stadium Arlington (ESA). With ESA’s 100,000 square feet of space to spread out in and the built-in technical components needed to host esports events that are digitally broadcast around the world, ESA has quickly become a go-to facility for hybrid meetings in DFW.