Heller, president and general manager of the Sands Expo and Convention Center, formerly was vice president of trade show operations for the Needham, Mass.-based Interface Group, which owned the Comdex computer trade show.

As the owner of Comdex, Heller knew what it took to keep the show coming back to Las Vegas year after year. Now, the head of the Sands Expo Center sees things from the other perspective, knowing that he has competition that can undercut him in the local market.

Heller has no qualms talking about what he considers to be an unfair playing field and did so in an interview with In Business Las Vegas.

Question: Las Vegas seems to be on a roll attracting conventions and meetings. Meanwhile, the Brookings Institution says the trade show and conventions industry is shrinking and that it is unwise to expand convention facilities. Who's right and why?

Answer: I've read that report and like most of my colleagues in the industry, I don't agree with it. I think what we really have to look at is Las Vegas. Did that report remotely apply to Las Vegas? The answer is a resounding no. When you look at the years quoted in that report -- there's a lot of '97, '98, '99, 2000 in there -- we've grown. The South Hall (of the Las Vegas Convention Center) opened, Mandalay Bay opened and we're absorbing all of that into the marketplace. Where's that business coming from? It's coming from other cities who maybe shouldn't be building or shouldn't be expanding. When you look at it from our world, Las Vegas is very strong as we know. We live here; we see the occupancy; we see what's going on. I can't tell you, because I don't study the other markets, whether the report is right about the second- or third-tier cities. But certainly in a lot of other cities where they said, "Let's build the building, they will come," doesn't always hold true. And in Las Vegas, if we build a building, we don't just assume they come, we work to get them to come and we work to serve them and keep them happy and keep them here. That's why we've been successful as a destination.

The Sands Expo Center has several of the 38 Tradeshow 200 events that come to Las Vegas every year. What's your secret to attracting this kind of business?

There's really no secret. Treat them right. Give the customer good service and recognize who your customer is. The customer isn't just the show organizer. The customer is the exhibitor in the booth and the customer is the attendee that comes to that event. I think because we grew up in the trade-show business having owned Comdex for many, many years and our background is being a customer myself -- I was a customer -- maybe we take a little bit different view of our customer in the world and we've been successful.

What is the Sands Expo Center doing to increase its share of shows?

I don't know if I'd say increase. We look at our calendar out into the year and we see a hole and we target customers and we attempt to fill it. It's about relationships and people. You can spend a ton of money advertising, but if you survey our customers, they know who we are and they know where we are. We go out and visit our customers in their offices in their places of businesses and we talk about the virtues of Las Vegas first because you can't sell them on the destination of the Sands Expo and the Venetian unless you convince them that they want to come to Las Vegas first. If they're convinced on Vegas, now we need to sell them on us. It's a lot of work and it takes a lot of time. It's not a go-out-and-close-you tomorrow. It's a joke with our sales staff that if a $200 or a $500 fancy dinner could close a piece of business, I wouldn't need a sales staff. I'd fly around the country, I'd seek 22 customers, take them all to an expensive dinner and have a contract. It doesn't work that way. It's about time and relationships and trust that we're going to deliver on our promise and that they're going to be successful when they come here with us.

What new shows are on the horizon for the Sands Expo Center?

We're talking to a number of new customers, but I can't talk to you about who they are. We're always talking to new customers. It's nice to talk to your old customers and you always want to keep your existing customers happy, but we're always out in the market looking at new customers for the future, because everything changes.

Sometimes shows come into Vegas for four or five years and they leave. The Super Show is a perfect example. The Super Show is talking about coming back to Las Vegas. Now here's a show that was in Atlanta, we brought it to Las Vegas, it did well, but they had decided they were going to come here for three years and then they were going to go to Orlando. Now they're talking about coming back to Las Vegas, and they're having trouble finding the window of opportunity to get in. If you look at the new Tradeshow (200) book that just came out, one of the tables you want to look at is the month that those shows run in. It's so heavily slanted to the first quarter. Great! Let's all build 10 million square feet to serve the first quarter. But what do you do with it for the rest of the year? That's part of the juggle that we all have to deal with.

What's the biggest complaint conventioneers have had about your facilities and what are you doing to address them?

If a customer has a complaint, we'll do the best we can to address it if it's a service. You can't do a whole lot with the walls, the ceiling and the floor. A structure's a structure. You just do the best you can to address their issue, whatever it may be. What is one show's issue may not be another. I'll give you an example. We wanted to be energy-efficient, certainly for those of us who live in Las Vegas, we want to be energy-efficient. So I put in energy-efficient bulbs in the hallway. One customer's thrilled because I'm being energy-efficient. The next customer comes in and says, "You've got to make it brighter." So you have that issue. You have the green issue with trash and you have one customer who says, "I want to hand out bags to exhibitors so they can sort their trash." The next customer comes in and says, "I want you to put big glutton trash barrels around so that everyone can throw their trash in it."

The bigger picture of Las Vegas: Probably the biggest single issue today that I see coming up is customers' coming to Las Vegas to run shows and making sure that another one of their competitors doesn't come in to another convention center in our city and compete and try to take their business. That's probably the biggest issue in the customer's mind today. If affects different shows in different ways. If it's a small show, they don't pay as much attention to it. If it's a big show, one of the top 50, now you see a bunch of small shows spring up. Those are issues that the customers face. Now I look at it and I say, 'I would hope that the show takes good care of their buyers and sellers because that's their responsibility and that those customers go to those main shows.' If they're going to another show, you always have to ask yourself as a show producer, 'Why is the customer not coming to me, why is it going to them?' That's not my business. But that's an issue that most cities don't face because there's one main convention center and hotel in every other city. In Las Vegas, we have three. So the dynamics change a bit. But you can't get over the fact that what happens to attendance when it comes to this market, it does go up. They sell more booth space, more attendees come and they stay. So, you know, it's pretty simple.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority's primary function is to "put heads in beds" when it was established 50 years ago. But now that casino companies have evolved into multibillion-dollar corporations and spend millions on marketing, does the LVCVA still have a purpose? The resorts are making the money; why not let them foot the bill?

We are footing the bill. We put the heads in beds. The LVCC doesn't put the heads in beds at the Venetian. We do it. I market myself. I have a sales staff. We're the properties that set the room rates and do all that sort of thing. And where does the room tax go? It goes to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority that uses it to compete against me by subsidizing the rate of their facility. And they're able to lose money in operations by taking the heads in beds that we help generate and essentially use it to compete against me.

Critics have said the LVCVA offers convention rates that subsidize trade shows. Do they and is it fair to you and Mandalay?

Is it fair to us? I'm not sure how to answer that. But let me take your question another way. If they subsidize the rate -- in other words if I'm getting 30 cents a square foot and they're getting 25 cents -- rest assured that that nickel a square foot isn't going back to the exhibitor's pocket. It's the show organizer's bottom line. That's just the way it is. So, we're not subsidizing anything with our tax dollars that way. And if you look at Las Vegas, I generally get more for my space than the LVCC does. I don't know what Mandalay charges; you'd have to talk to them. But how come I can get it in the market? I'm up the street from them. How come I can get more for my product? A building is a building, a box is a box. A floor is a floor, a ceiling is a ceiling. Freight comes in, freight goes out.

People come to Las Vegas because they want to be here. They'll pay the rate. I'd love to see some of that money go into the infrastructure that we need for the people who live here. The police. The fire department. The schools. Those are all big issues to all of us that live here. It's a big issue to me. Why can't we use some of that money? Is it because we have a fear the customer is not going to come? If we had that fear in sleeping rooms, we'd still be getting $19 a night in Las Vegas for a sleeping room, wouldn't we? What do hotels do? They press the ceiling until they find the ceiling. What does an airline do with its airline seats? It presses the ceiling until it finds the ceiling of rates and then it retreats a little bit if it has to. Press the ceiling. They've never tried it. Yet, I'm doing it. I don't know if that analogy makes sense, but we can take those dollars and do other things in our community with them.

You know, there's going to be increased income going to the Convention Authority in the terms of room tax collected from these condos that are going to be rented. The condos that get rented out on a short-term basis, they're going to collect room tax off every one of those. Think about it. How many millions of dollars more go into those coffers?

Do you consider the Las Vegas Convention Center and Mandalay Bay to be your competitors or do you consider the Chicagos, Atlantas and Dallases of the world to be your primary competition?

Something that we worked out with the LVCC quite some time ago is that we'll go out on the road -- the Sands Expo, Mandalay Bay and the Las Vegas Convention Center -- and jointly sell. We'll sit in front of a potential client that has not been in Las Vegas and sell them on the reasons for coming to Las Vegas, because the first sale is Las Vegas. If we convince that customer to come here, then we're going to compete for the business. So if there's a show in Chicago, Atlanta or Miami and that's where the show is and we're talking about bringing the show to Las Vegas, first and foremost I'm competing with the city they're in. Once we convince them to come to Las Vegas, we're competing amongst each other for that business. And any business that comes into the city, whether it goes into my building or any of the others, is good for the city of Las Vegas -- more people in town.

With the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, do you have any regrets about not being a part of the Las Vegas Monorail's development?

No. Is it running today?

What impact will the expansion of the Convention Center have on the meetings and convention landscape of the city?

I personally -- and this is Richie Heller speaking and not the company -- I question what they're doing. The Venetian has a substantial investment in meeting rooms, ballrooms and meeting space. Mandalay Bay has a substantial investment. Mirage, substantial. MGM Grand, substantial. Now they're going to compete with us for that business. And they're probably going to sell it at a subsidized rate. Why are they doing it? Is the Convention Center substantially full? Is the Convention Center losing events? If the convention space is full, what is the occupancy rate in our city? Are they going to spend $400 million and increase the occupancy rate in the city? Probably not.

What impact does the opening of Wynn Las Vegas have on the meetings and convention industry here?

I think an opening's good, whether it's Wynn or any other property. It always adds another level of excitement. We obviously hope that anybody that opens in the market is successful because it's not good for the market in total if somebody doesn't do well. They added more meeting space, they're competing in the market. Our claim again, first and foremost, is we have the convention center, which is attached to the hotel. So I'm going to fill the Venetian or largely work to fill the Venetian, because these people are here. Where do they want to stay? They want to stay closest to where they exhibit. They want to stay closest to where they attend generally. So, Wynn's not hurting us. Those people are coming closer to us (from the south) because he's got more rooms. They're coming from somewhere else.

So you have a good relationship with Wynn Las Vegas?

Not particularly. We don't really work with any of the hotels around us. The way the project works here is that I work with the show producer, who rents our building. They may or may not take rooms at the Venetian. It's up to them. And then, they go out and they work with whatever hotels they want. So it's really not a question of us working with anybody. It's when you're a meeting planner, you've got to secure the space to hold your event. Then, the second part of the package is to go and assemble the room block. But you can't go assemble the room block until you've secured the space. If I go out and assemble the room block for the third week of March and the space isn't available, I've wasted a whole lot of time going to a lot of hotels. So they'll meet with us, they'll meet with the Venetian. They'll go to MGM, Mirage, Wynn or Treasure Island or Harrah's or whoever and they'll assemble the rooms they need for their event. It's pretty simple really.

What's on the horizon for the Venetian Congress Center and the Sands Expo Center? Are your own expansion plans on track?

We're not announcing anything officially, but yes, we are working on expansion plans because we've got customers that need more space. And again, listening to our customers' needs, we have to do that. So, sometime in the future, we'll be announcing an expansion at the Expo Center. As you know, the (Palazzo) is under construction, along with that is going to go more meeting room and ballroom space to support those sleeping rooms and to support the customers that are here.

What impact will the opening of the Palazzo have on the convention and meetings industry and your own competitive position? You're adding convention space, right?

Absolutely, absolutely. Not trade show exhibit space, but ballrooms and meeting rooms. A tremendous amount. It just makes this total campus unlike anything else in the United States that I know of, in terms of square footage when we're done, sleeping rooms attached and all the amenities attached. You can go to Chicago. Nice building. But if you want to have lunch, you're not going to eat at Wolfgang Puck without taking 45 minutes by cab each way to get downtown in traffic to get a good meal and entertain your customer and do business. Even in midday, we have it all here without ever leaving the building. So it makes it unique.

Will the Sands Expo Center model be used in the company's development of a resort and convention center in Macau?

I think it will be similar. I don't know if the model will be exactly the same, but it will be very similar. We are under construction over there for our convention center. We've designed it already and we've already started building it, so we'll have a convention center component, an arena component and a hotel component. The interest that we're getting from trade-show people about what we're building in Macau is very exciting. And we haven't done a great amount of press, there's no literature, no brochures, there's nothing yet, yet clients are calling us wanting to get on the calendar. They're talking about dates and space already. It's very exciting.

Richard N. Velotta covers tourism for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. He can be reached at (702) 259-4061 or by e-mail at velotta@lasvegassun.com.