In the first week of February, around 150,000 fans will invade Dallas, TX for Super Bowl XLV and are expected to spend at least $150-200 million.

Cowboys Stadium

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, because business travel and group meetings account for over 83% of hotel stays in the Dallas area, and the city plans to milk the Super Bowl to boost its meetings and convention business.

They’ve been spending some seriously big money ($14 billion) on developments, some of which are still ongoing.

A lot of this money has been targeted to impress the 3500 members of the media and thousands of corporate decision makers and meeting planners attending the Super Bowl that the new Dallas is very much different from the dated Big D.

The biggest improvement is, of course, the new $1.2 billion Cowboys Stadium in Arlington with its retractable roof and giant screen, which gets a big boost from the Super Bowl right out of the gate.

Another big improvement is the city owned $500 million, 1000 room Omni Convention Center hotel, connected to the Dallas Convention Center via a skybridge. It won’t open until early 2012, but meeting planners in town for Super Bowl event planning have been getting a good close look at it all year long.

Omni Dallas Hotel

Ed Netzhammer, Regional VP and General Manager of the Omni Dallas Hotel, says that “Since the Omni Dallas Hotel began taking reservations last September, the team has already booked over 132,000 room nights.”

To add to the buzz, the other large convention hotels in Dallas have been spending hundreds of millions more on makeovers. The 1,840 room Sheraton Dallas has spent $91 million, out of which $7 million was for upgrades to the conference center and the 70 meeting rooms. The upgrades include large interactive touch screens which provide assistance, flight status and directions.

The 1,120 room Hyatt Regency Dallas has spent $63 million in the last year and a half, out of which $20 million was spent on convention facilities. The 1,608 room Hilton Anatole, which is the official NFL headquarters  during Super Bowl week, has spent $100 million on a multi-year renovation.

The Dallas CVB isn’t sitting idle either. They’re paying $30,000 for three short films – Dallas by DART, Arts District, and Western experience in Dallas - to showcase all the recent improvements and upgrades to the city.

It’s early days yet, but it looks like all the investment and hard work, not to mention the successful bid for the Super Bowl in the first place, has already begun to pay off. Earlier this year, Dallas hosted 3000 members of the Professional Convention Management Association for the first time since 1992.

A PCMA convention inevitably leads to a jump in a city’s convention and meetings business, so Dallas now has 14 large conventions scheduled for 2011, followed by 18 in 2012 and probably a lot more after that once the new Convention Center hotel opens.

Photo credits: Cowboys Stadium – Mahanga; Hotel – Omni Hotels & Resorts

A Super Bowl ad by KIA Motors with sock puppets in Vegas is drawing heavy fire from the NFL for violating its ban on Vegas casinos. The NFL must be very peeved, because the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) got to have the outlawed cake and eat it too, since they didn’t pay for an ad this year.

KIA Super Bowl ad

Titled Joyride Dream, the 60-second third quarter KIA spot follows a colorful cast of life-size children’s characters – including Muno, Sock Monkey, MR. X, Robot and Teddy Bear – who take a Sorento CUV for a spin through a series of dream-like adventures.

In Vegas, the ad starts with the gang in front of the Fabulous Las Vegas sign, and goes on to show them rolling past the Statue of Liberty at the New York-New York casino and then into the Monte Carlo casino, and dancing in a nighclub. Both properties are owned by MGM Mirage.

An NFL spokesman told Portfolio that they did not see the ad before it aired, and it was CBS’ responsibility to make sure the ads did not violate NFL policy. The NFL did not allow Vegas to advertise until December last year, at which time the rules were loosened to allow Vegas to advertise itself as a destination, so long as the ads didn’t show the Strip, casinos, drinking, or sexual activity.

It seems the creators of the ad, Los Angeles ad agency David&Goliath, has both KIA and Monte Carlo as its clients and while the ad was made with the approval and cooperation of all parties concerned, it somehow still managed to avoid getting flagged by CBS.

To make it even more of a raw deal for the NFL, the LVCVA decided to forego a Super Bowl ad this year and instead spent $1.4m on targeted markets, aimed at getting people to visit Vegas for the Super Bowl weekend.

End result – Vegas got free air-time during the Super Bowl courtesy KIA’s sock puppets, and used the ad money saved to good effect by bringing in 280,000 people to Vegas for the game, much more than the approximately 100,000 people who were in Miami.

In the wake of falling prices and fewer fliers, airlines seem hellbent on irritating their customers as a fiscal strategy.

Apparently, the outcry against adding fees to flights on specific high-traffic days during the holidays wasn’t loud enough, because Delta, American and United announced yet more such because-we-can fees in 2010. Delta and United have carved out no less than 41 flying dates between January and May to slap an extra $30 onto the ticket as punishment for going on Spring Break when everyone else does. All three airlines announced $50 surcharges for select flights on February 8. Odd day? Not to those flying home from the Super Bowl in Miami.

Guess getting reamed $12 for a hot dog at Dolphin Stadium isn’t enough insult to loyal sports fans.

“This is becoming kind of a grab” for passengers’ cash, Robert W. Mann, president of consultant R.W. Mann & Co., told Bloomberg. “Nickel and diming in the form of $5 and $10 bills is really where it’s going.” But is it good business? Ask hotels, which are backing off from charging fees for every little service.

And it’s not as if they don’t have other revenue streams to explore. For starters, prices are steadying now, according to FareCompare. Similar travel-management companies are also predicting airfares will continue to rise in 2010, putting an end to the free fall drop in revenue.

American Airlines will dip its toe into retail sales on U.S. to London flights, peddling Heathrow Express train tickets. Its new inflight wi-fi service will promote online buying from SkyMall. After all, if you have the credit card reader on the back of the seat, they will buy. “We wouldn’t invest if we didn’t feel comfortable it would provide a fair rate of return,”  John Tiliacos, American Airlines’ managing director of onboard products, told a reporter from The New York Times. Reportedly, Broadway theaters and the Walt Disney Company want to elbow in on the action to sell their tickets on planes.

This direction fits right in with the snacks for sale, luggage charges and headset fees.

Then there are the behind-the-scenes moves, such as American Airlines and ARC’s partnership to develop an electronic tool that i.d.s duplicate bookings. The airline estimates these errors cost it “huge sums of money,” and considering the sums that pass through these companies in the first place, that figure must be large indeed to rate that kind of label from executives.

Yes, the recession is a bitch. Yes, the airlines weren’t in the black anyhow when the economy tanked. But at some point in your scramble to survive, you have to protect your future. At least these alternative ways of raising cash allow the customer a chance to decline and provide an extra service for their money. Tacking on fees for the heck of it is just tacky.

Photography: Mr. Usagi, jonathanb1989, psyberartist (Flickr.com)