There’s a lot going on in Atlantic City, N.J., for meeting planners to get excited about, with the Tropicana Atlantic City soon to add the 604-room Solana Tower; Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa just announcing an upcoming new entertainment venue with 1,8000 square feet; and Ocean Casino Resort debuting two new Stephen Starr restaurants, with a new indoor miniature golf course and bar on the way featuring technology akin to the Las Vegas Sphere.
At IMEX America, we caught up with Anthony Molino, the new vice president of sales at Visit Atlantic City—and a longtime MPI volunteer leader—to discuss the formation of a new customer advisory board, expanded efforts to better the local community and some activations related to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Tell us about your plans for a customer advisory board.
Our focus next year is all about starting from within, starting at home. We’re doing a lot of work with not only our hospitality stakeholders, but also the residents that live in Atlantic City. Sometimes people don’t fully understand what Atlantic City does. We are such a small town, and we want to make sure people understand the importance of tourism and what that economic impact means to them as people that live in the area. People that live and work in Atlantic City have been here since they were born, so there aren’t a lot of fresh eyes coming in to say what needs to be done and what we’re doing well and what we need to improve.
So we thought a customer advisory board would be a benefit to the city, helping to point out the areas where we’re doing well but also having some really hard conversations about things that we need to improve. When you have unbiased people that have a long tenure of professional experience on the planning side, I think it allows for a lot of positive change.
Tell us about your MPI volunteer leader experience and how it might help you in your new role.
A lot of the success that I’ve had in my career is because of MPI, because of my involvement in volunteerism within the organization. Being the chair of the Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) Advisory Council for two years and currently serving as vice chair of the U.S. Midwest Regional Council has allowed me to see different perspectives outside of what I get paid for. You get to have those hard conversations about how people are really feeling and why tourism benefits them as a human.
At Visit Atlantic City, we do a lot of work around advocacy, volunteerism and just basically helping the community get to a better place. And I think working on committees such as the MPI EDI Advisory Council, I’m able to learn from other people—not so much being taught but learning together by actually experiencing some hard things and working our way out of it. And we do a lot of that internally within our company, where we’ll talk about some of the things in the community that need a little bit more attention and actually putting together a plan to go out and be part of that change.
Can you share an example of a community project you’re working on?
We just formed a community relations committee. We’re still working on the actual title of the committee, but the idea of it is to kind of go beyond the scope of what our job descriptions are and focus on areas of the city, whether it has to do with cleaning the streets or working with different governmental agencies on specific advocacy initiatives or even working with local charities. For example, we have a good partnership with the Boys & Girls Club of Atlantic City and also a local organization, MudGirls Studios, which basically gives women a second chance, teaching them job skills and helping them focus on new careers. These kinds of community partnerships allow our staff to be more proud of where they live. We have been very successful in our own jobs, but when you can start gaining more pride in just doing something for the better good of the community, it really helps boost morale.
Tell us about your local connection and why it’s important.
I think it’s super important. I’ve had some great jobs. I had a really good experience in both Chicago and Atlanta, but those were homes I created for myself. My family is from Ohio and moved to Michigan, so when I left college, I went straight to Chicago and I had no family, no ties there. I met my husband when I lived in D.C., and we had no ties there either. We just recently adopted a baby boy, and as we go further into the parenting process, we’re realizing that our friends are amazing, but family support means everything. He has grandparents and lots of cousins and aunts and uncles, and so when this opportunity came with Visit Atlantic City, it was not only great for my career trajectory, but also being within an hour of family, I think was just a no brainer for us. And I appreciate that [Visit Atlantic City President & CEO] Gary [Musich], no matter if it was me or somebody else, wanted someone with ties to New Jersey, because now that I’m here, I totally get it. People don't leave. It’s like the best kept secret. New Jersey is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, and in particular Atlantic City, which is surrounded by some of the best beachfront.
What’s on the horizon for Atlantic City that will positively impact meetings and events?
We’re focusing on a strategy to renovate our convention center and the attached hotel, and then we’ll really focus on local events. We think these local events will get a lot of press and will show what this little beach town can do on a large scale. One example: Beach concerts that we’re going to have in tandem with concerts at Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall. And we’ll host more sports, including combat sports functions, whether it’s MMA or wrestling competitions. Some of our community projects will end up being super large scale, and that will help conference planners know what we can do as an organization and feel confident that they can put on large-scale events in our small beach town.
We're also playing up the FIFA World Cup, which is coming to the Northeast region in 2026. We’re currently planning different activations around the city where you can watch some of the games, like from the beach. We’re also reimagining events such as Restaurant Week, which was previously held in October. We’re moving it to March for a monthlong event called Taste Atlantic City. One thing people don’t really know is that our food scene is amazing. We have a great food entertainment and bar scene, and hopefully with the new way we’re unveiling Taste Atlantic City, we’re going to get more eyes on than what we actually have here.
