By Ken Alltucker
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The Queen City's foremost television personality will become Cincinnati's chief pitchman at a national conference of meeting planners and trade group executives in Hawaii this month.

Don Mueller, star of the NBC show Who Wants to Marry My Dad?, will join tourism officials in Honolulu Aug. 23-26 at the American Society of Association Executives' 3,200-delegate convention.

The meeting comprises a who's who of convention and trade executives - the decision-makers for conventions across the nation. The Greater Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau invited Mueller in an effort to capitalize on the Glendale man's brush with celebrity from the reality television show, which concluded Monday. The bureau will pay for airfare and other travel costs.

Bureau president Lisa Haller said Mueller's "power, personality and charisma" should help Cincinnati make a major splash. Mueller will appear at the bureau's trade booth as tourism officials hand out details about the $160 million expansion of the Albert B. Sabin Cincinnati Convention Center.

Association spokesman Chris Vest said the annual trade meeting attracts tourism bureau officials from across the nation.