Wow! The first month of 2018 flew by! Happy February and I hope your year is off to a great start. I am honored to serve as SLAA President this year.
Thank you for attending our January meeting, where we had a star-studded line-up of great speakers telling us all about the exciting developments going on in downtown St. Louis. Our fantastic speakers were: Ryan McClure with the Gateway Arch Park Foundation who provided an update on the final stage of the CityArchRiver project; Jim Watry with Ballpark Village who told us about Phase II currently under construction; Todd Hotaling with Lodging Hospitality Management who showed plans for the new St. Louis Aquarium; and Brian Hall with Explore St. Louis who provided an update of several new hotels under development. Many thanks to these speakers for their time and providing such wonderful information. I would also like to thank our friends at Tin Roof St. Louis for providing a fun and exciting event space for the first SLAA meeting of the year!
We were also able to introduce our 2018 Board of Directors, and recognize Brooke Emshoff with an award for doing such an amazing job as the 2017 SLAA President.
We were honored to present the 2017 Spirit of St. Louis Award Winners. We had many amazing nominations this year which made the task of choosing the winners very difficult, but a great problem to have! Please join me in congratulating the following programs and individuals:
Spirit of St. Louis Individual Award
Jenny Nixon, Executive Director of Tourism Innovation, Bi-State Development
Spirit of St. Louis Program Award
Gateway Motorsports Park for the Inaugural Bommarito Automotive 500 Verizon IndyCar Series Race
We were honored to have Gateway Motorsports Park President Curtis Francois in attendance to receive the award.
Spirit of St. Louis Hall of Fame Award
David Lancaster, Editor, WHERE Magazine
Thank you to Jackie Mollet with the Saint Louis Science Center for handling the nomination process this year. Many thanks to all those who nominated a program or individual for the 2017 season. We appreciate your participation, and the opportunity to recognize the amazing hospitality and tourism community! And it’s never too early to start thinking of deserving candidates for 2018! Applications are always available.
The March Meeting is March 21st at Joule in Lafayette Square. Click here for more information!
Thank you for your time and devotion to this association. We couldn’t do it without our members! If you ever have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Jen Hollenkamp
2018 President
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