You have been hired as a tourism business consultant and have been tasked with offering proposals to Choose Chicago, the City's DMO, as well as key government stakeholders in the destination to solve a major problem.

Background: Once regarded as the premier location for large scale conferences and events, the City of Chicago is experiencing a significant drop off in convention business. Competition from other major cities has seen a dramatically risen in the past 10 years. For example, Orlando, which is less expensive; San Francisco, which has a newly renovated convention center; and Boston, which has a newly built BCEC Complex in the Seaport. In a recent poll of meeting planning clients, two major factors were brought up:

• Union Labor Costs at McCormick Place
• The distance between the McCormick Place Convention Center and the downtown hotels necessary for hosting a large conference

Union Labor Issues:Addressing this problem is seen as a major focus in remaining competitive, as costs of hosting an event in Chicago were far higher than the same event in a rival city. Therefore city government, the DMO, the Convention Center leadership, and the Union Leadership met. After several rounds of intense negotiating, the Union agreed to relax their rates and jurisdiction when it comes to the set-up and tear down of a large-scale conferences. While this was a major win for the DMO, the clients still viewed the distance issues as a major set-back.

• Distance:The majority of hotels in Chicago are located in the heart of the city, looking toward Lake Michigan, within two neighborhoods, the Loop and River North. These are key tourism areas as they are home to almost all of the major Chicago tourist attractions. The McCormick Place Convention Center is located to the south of these neighborhoods about five miles away (see mapfor reference). Currently connected to McCormick Place is a Hyatt Hotel with 1200 rooms available to groups. This not nearly enough, most citywide conventions that use this space require 10,00015,000rooms on their peak nights, but this is the only hotel within the convention center complex as currently constructed. Additionally, there are no trains or subway stops between the two locations. Currently the only way to commute back and forth as an attendee is via taxi, uber, or public bus.

Situation: The City Government wants to remain competitive in the convention Industry, which is a massive economic generator for the destination, so they have given completeauthority to the DMO to create a viable solution. The City has allocated a budget of $15 Million Dollars for this project.

Your Task:Brainstorm 1 implementable idea that the city could develop to ease the distance issue that is turning meeting and event planners off to meeting in Chicago. The solution to this problem is of theutmost importance in sustaining the hospitality industry in the city.

After posting your initial solution, please review the solutions offered by your peers and offer additional commentary and points of connection.