News
Former ConVis CEO Newest Consultant
Reint Reinders Working With Advertising Agency's New Oceanside Office
By CONNIE LEWIS
San Diego Business Journal Staff
Posted date: 8/21/2006
When Reint Reinders left the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau in July after 15 years as its president and chief executive officer, he said he was going to relax and take the summer off before deciding his next career move.
But he hasn’t let any grass grow under his golf shoes. At the beginning of this month, a consulting firm he formed, Reint Reinders and Associates Inc., landed its first client, MeringCarson, a Sacramento-based advertising agency.
Reinders said his role would be business development for the agency’s newly established Oceanside office, its first expansion outside Sacramento.
The full-service agency, which had gross billings of $30 million and gross profit of about $5 million last year, boasts an array of tourism clients, including the state’s Travel and Tourism Commission, Pebble Beach Resorts, the American division of the Fiji Visitors Bureau in Los Angeles, Disneyland Parks and Resorts, and Walt Disney Travel Co.
“Given our experience in travel and tourism, and the fact that the agency got to know and work with Reint through the California tourism commission, it made sense that we could leverage that experience when he decided to move from ConVis,” said Paul Whitbeck, the general manager of MeringCarson’s Oceanside office. “It’s really an opportunity for us to tap into Reint’s knowledge of the region and the business relationships he has made.”
Dave Mering, who founded the 21-year-old firm and is its chief executive officer, said, “We want to utilize Reint and his wisdom and knowledge of the San Diego area and the folks he has come to know in Southern California to introduce MeringCarson.”
Reinders said he expects that his work with the advertising agency will occupy about 20 hours of his time weekly. He declined to give the terms of the contract or cite its value.
Whitbeck said the agency has 34 people in its Sacramento office and four in Oceanside.
Aside from tourism, MeringCarson’s client roster includes businesses in the health, financial, retail and real estate sectors.
Mering said the motive for opening an Oceanside office was to “get closer to the existing clients we have in that area,” establish new ones, and to attract new talent to the firm.
“It’s important to attract and retain high-quality and skilled people and a lot of people want to work in Southern California and not Sacramento.”
Meanwhile, Reinders was recently named one of the 25 most influential people in the meetings business by the Meetings Industry Megasite.
His resignation from ConVis, announced more than a year ago, followed City Hall taking one of the bureau’s main jobs, selling meeting space at the 2.6 million-square-foot San Diego Convention Center, and giving it to the San Diego Convention Center Corp., which operates the facility.
City Hall had audited the bureau’s books in the wake of news stories in the San Diego Union-Tribune that called into question Reinders’ compensation package and a marketing trip he made to Florida to court convention business. The audit, completed in the fall of 2004, found ConVis substantially in compliance, including expenses related to the Florida trip.
Some sources said that Reinders’ broad-based marketing strategies that emphasized attractions, cultural events and community interests as well as the lodging industry led to his departure since they were out of line with that of several local hotel owners whose main interests are to increase occupancy and meetings business. Others said his resignation was the result of dirty politics.
Reinders’ base salary was $225,000 with a performance bonus of up to 40 percent and a car allowance of $1,000 a month. He also had an interest-free loan available to him. The package was within the middle range of those paid to presidents of the country’s top 10 convention and visitors bureaus.
David Peckinpaugh, who succeeded Reinders, has a base salary of $240,000 annually, a performance bonus of as much as 30 percent and an $850 monthly car allowance.