Time Is Ripe for the MBA Annual's Las Vegas Debut

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In its 101-year history, the Mortgage Bankers Association's Annual Convention has never been held in Las Vegas.

However, 2014 isn't the first year the MBA has tried to bring its marquee event to the City of Lights. The Mandalay Bay was originally booked for the 2011 edition of MBA Annual. But a last-minute decision to relocate saw the 98th edition of the convention held in Chicago (the same venue that was already booked for the 2012 convention).

Given Las Vegas's "Sin City" persona, where the abundance of gambling and all other manners of excess befitting America's adult playground are renowned, it's understandable that an industry being scrutinized for its role in the financial crisis as heavily as the mortgage industry was in 2011 might be hesitant about hosting an event there until some of the pressure had cooled off.

"In 2011, there were still a lot of sensitivities of what was going on in the housing market and our industry was in the spotlight," said Marcia Davies, the MBA's chief operating officer. "We are now in a place where we have a fragile recovery. Our members and regulators are working very hard to get it all right and a lot of that gets brought together at our conventions."

But logistics and contract obligations played a much stronger hand in prompting the rescheduling than the desire to avoid negative publicity, Davies said.

Venues for conventions as large as the MBA Annual get booked five or more years in advance. The MBA was able to renegotiate its contract for the 2011 convention so that the Mandalay Bay could accommodate another group's event that year.

And since the housing crisis had sent industry employment reeling, the reworked contract allowed the MBA to scale down the 2014 convention to a size that was appropriate for the expected attendance. The arrangement was a "win-win," Davies told NMN.

And even though concerns about the potential sensitivities of its members or outside observers regarding hosting the 2011 convention in Las Vegas may not have been the motivating factor behind rescheduling Mandalay Bay, Davies acknowledges that it was an ancillary benefit to the switch.

The decision to relocate the 2011 convention was prudent for a number of reasons, but the Chicago event was not without its own share of controversy.

Multiple protests against industry foreclosure practices and government bailouts of financial institutions were held outside the convention hotel, and a New York Times business columnist took Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to task for playing the roles of "socialites" with their participation at the convention.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency Office of Inspector General would later conduct a review of the more than $600,000 that the government-sponsored enterprises spent attending the 2011 convention.

While the review found that registration and travel-related expenses for sending 174 employees from the two GSEs were in line with federal guidelines, the FHFA OIG was critical of the $280,000 that Fannie and Freddie spent on sponsoring the convention and hosting dinners.

The OIG review was the result of a request made by Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, who was chair of the House Financial Services subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations at the time, and called the convention expenditures a "lavish" use of taxpayer money.

But as both the housing market and economy continue to recover, those tensions are now easing, and any concerns about whether the mortgage industry risks upsetting the public by hosting its largest trade show in Las Vegas have largely subsided.

"Few cities can take a convention of this size and work the logistics the way we need it for the meeting and exhibit spaces... We think there's the right balance of meaningful content and the right ways to network," Davies said.

Besides, as much as the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority may push its "What happens here, stays here," slogan with vacationing travelers, it's "Vegas Means Business" campaign is also active in promoting the abundance of cheap flights, hotels and dining options that make Las Vegas an accessible and affordable venue for business conventions.

Of the nearly 40 million people who visited Las Vegas in 2013, more than 5 million were convention delegates, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. There were 22,000 conventions and meetings held across the 10.8 million square feet of exhibit space located throughout Las Vegas last year, which had a total economic impact of $7.4 billion on the local economy.

NAMB-The Association of Mortgage Professionals held its first Las Vegas conference in 2007, and has continued to do so annually. The first conference attracted more than 3,000 people, though attendance waned during the darkest days of the economic downturn. But numbers are picking up again, with about 2,100 people attending the most recent NAMB Las Vegas conference in September, up from around 1,500 in 2012. There were 68 trade show exhibitors this year, too, said Don Frommeyer, who ended his term as the group's president at the meeting and is now its chief executive officer.

The NAMB conference's exhibit hall was open on Saturday and Sunday, and most companies that exhibited timed their employees' arrival and departure to that schedule.

"They have expenses as well, with the room and the flight, so they try to make it short and sweet," Frommeyer said.

NAMB was looking for a location which would be economical for its membership to attend, also because of the cost for them to get to the meeting and the cost to stay there.

For two of the three nights at this year's conference, attendees were able to stay at Luxor for approximately $50 per night.

Educational sessions were available during all three days of the NAMB event, and to keep attendees at the conference, topics included a number of sales and marketing related sessions, an eight-hour course to meet Consumer Financial Protection Bureau education requirements and even a session on one of the industry's hot-button topics, the mini-correspondent business.

"You always worry about people coming to sessions," he said, so timing and topic are the key elements to keeping people engaged and not elsewhere, such as the gaming tables.

"Any time you send a group of people anywhere, there is going to be a mini-distraction anyway," Frommeyer said.

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