While the meeting itself is important, what is to come after that could be even more crucial to the log-term strength of Downtown, says Rich Grant, spokesman for the Denver Metro Convention & Visitor's Bureau.

That's because ASAE research shows that cities that host these meeting receive up to $1.5 billion in business from other conventions in the five years following the convention.

What happens, Grant explains to GlobeSt.com, is that the top-level executives, in turn, schedule future meetings in host cities.

''Basically, these are CEOs who represent 25,000 associations that have millions of members,'' Grant says. ''Every third working person in the US belongs to an association. A nursing association, for example, might say this is a great city. We haven't been here in 15 years and it's changed. Our next opening for a convention is 2009. And then they take it.''

Typically, the ASAE and groups like it tend to book their conventions for major cities such as New York, Chicago, Orlando and Las Vegas.

''This is really the Super Bowl of conventions,'' Grant tells GlobeSt.com. ''It's absolutely the crème de la crème.''

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