It's been a rough two months for Lisa Haller, the new president of the Greater Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau.

        Her biggest victory - securing the 5,000-delegate Urban League national convention - was snatched away last month when the national civil rights group said it would skip Cincinnati after all.

        Nevertheless, Ms. Haller says the bureau's handling of the Urban League situation “will serve as a model,” even though the group's absence will cost downtown's struggling shops, restaurants and hotels up to $4.3 million in lost revenue.

        The reason Ms. Haller is so upbeat despite the latest coup for boycott supporters is that it forced the convention bureau to aggressively pursue large groups, a strategy that will be repeated for every upcoming business meeting the tourism agency deems sympathetic to the boycott.

        “We knew for quite a while that the Urban League was vulnerable,” Ms. Haller, a former Universal Studios executive, said. “Their decision doesn't reverse the progress we've made.”

        Five weeks ago, Ms. Haller, Mayor Charlie Luken and local Urban League president Sheila Adams flew to New York to meet the Urban League's president, Hugh B. Price.

        Mr. Price seemed convinced that the city's reforms were real, issuing a public statement July 11 that the organization would have its 2003 convention in Cincinnati. The Urban League asked the convention bureau to sweeten the deal by renting the convention center for free, a $48,200 discount that local officials were willing to give.

        But four days later, Mr. Price and the Urban League changed course, citing the police department's announcement, in a news conference July 12, of the suspension of the department's highest-ranking black officer, Lt. Col. Ron Twitty, over a damaged police car.

        The bureau had no idea that the police department planned the news conference, Ms. Haller said. Its timing couldn't have been worse for Greater Cincinnati's tourism industry, which employs more than 80,000.

        “There are a lot of forces that are out of our control,” said Tom Caradonio, president of the Northern Kentucky Convention and Visitors Bureau. “You just have to keep selling what you have, and reassuring the customer base.”

        That's the course that Ms. Haller's bureau intends to follow. She crafted a new plan to personally visit and meet 50 large conventions that the bureau thinks are “at-risk” because of the boycott.

        So far, Ms. Haller's approach has garnered high marks from downtown merchants and other tourism officials.

        “What impresses me about Lisa is the confidence she exudes,” said Nat Comisar, chairman of the Maisonette Restaurant Group and a visitors bureau board member. “She has no doubt we are going to resolve these issues and move forward, and get this economic engine kicked into gear.”

        Not that Cincinnati is the only city figuring out how to fill empty hotel rooms. The soft economy and Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have dampened business travel nationwide.

        But the problems have been especially acute in Cincinnati, where last year's April riots, an extended Comair pilots strike and a summer crime wave combined to push the area's hotel occupancy to the lowest rate among major U.S. cities. The economic boycott - which began last summer after the riots were sparked by a police shooting death of a black man - also has counted as successes the cancellation of a handful of primarily African-American conventions as well as appearances by entertainers such as actor-comedian Bill Cosby and jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.

        The city's racial divide stemming from last year's riots isn't the only hurdle for Ms. Haller, a Cincinnati native and Ursuline Academy graduate. The bureau faces a fight for its own funding as well as generating countywide support for a $200 million expansion of the Albert B. Sabin Cincinnati Convention Center.

        Architects are drawing up plans for the new downtown convention center, and the state legislature recently OK'd a tax increase expected to be the primary funding source for the expansion.

        Yet Ms. Haller realizes that an expanded downtown center at a time when other cities already have built multimillion-dollar additions won't solve Cincinnati's convention woes. The bureau must convince conventions and trade groups to come despite the city's much-publicized problems, and Ms. Haller might have to do that sales job with fewer resources.

        Hamilton County commissioners have pledged support for funding up to $1 million a year for an upstart convention bureau for the northern suburbs. That money would come from an existing countywide hotel tax that funds the Greater Cincinnati bureau, jeopardizing its funding source.

        Ms. Haller said such a move would deplete an already underfunded group. A management audit released last year shows the Greater Cincinnati bureau is funded less than tourism agencies in Louisville, Indianapolis, Kansas City and other competitors in the Midwest.

        Another test for Ms. Haller: boosting employee morale. She regularly consults with her sales staffers to encourage them.

        Convention bureaus nationwide are having difficulty keeping salespeople because the slumping industry has resulted in smaller commission checks, Ms. Haller said.

        For now, business leaders seem to understand the difficult job that lies ahead for Ms. Haller.

        “You have to build on the good things you've got,” said Michael Fisher, president of the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce. “Lisa is an excellent communicator and an aggressive salesperson. I think there are real assets here that she and her team can use.”

Seminar helps you get handle on money
P&G brewing for new generation
Bureau going after big conventions
KFC, at 50, keeps on cluckin'
Domino's may add delivery charge
Drive-in movie's back
Kmart banking on Joe Boxer's appeal
Company car: Think of taxes
Flexibility can tame customers' fickleness
Tristate Business Notebook
This Week's Business Meetings
Commercial Real Estate Projects