When Cheryl Kilday took the helm at the Spokane Regional Convention and Visitor's Bureau last month, she didn't waste any time laying out her agenda with her staff. That approach led to a strengthening of the tourism promotion effort in her last job.

"Our role is connecting the dots—presenting an overall destination package, promoting Spokane's sense of place and personality in a meaningful way," she says. "We began developing how to do that in our early discussions on day one and day two."

In 1996, when she became the first president and CEO of the newly formed Loudoun Convention & Visitors Association, in Loudoun County, Virginia, she had an administrative assistant, a handful of visitor-center hosts, and a budget of $205,000, Kilday says. When she left this summer, the organization had grown to 10 full-time and eight part-time staff with a budget of $2.9 million. Loudoun County, just north of Washington D.C., now markets itself as a wine region and a wedding destination, as well as a convention venue.

Kilday is still settling in to her corner office on the third floor of the Spokane Regional Business Center, at 801 W. Riverside downtown.

Rich Hadley, president and CEO of Greater Spokane Incorporated, says, "Cheryl has exceptional experience and is a quick study on the region. She is a very collaborative leader, and we look forward to working with her on projects that involve marketing Spokane to the rest of the world."

Kilday's experience includes chairing the Greater Washington (D.C.) Tourism Alliance, serving as treasurer and president of the Northern Virginia Visitors Consortium, and as president of the Virginia Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus.

Kilday says that so far, she's been impressed with this region's friendliness and community-mindedness.

"People here talk to you. They smile. They're courteous. They strike up conversations in elevators. That's so refreshing," she says.

Kilday says she sees "a lot of local business commitment to the success of the community, and not just to their own bottom lines." She says it's been "heartwarming" to receive many calls, notes, and requests for meetings from community leaders since she arrived.

All that communication has a positive impact on the community, she says.

"The residents win, because it contributes to our quality of life, and it contributes to business's ability to attract a good work force," she says.

The new CVB chief isn't blind to the region's needs and challenges, though. Kilday says she is concerned about Spokane's capacity to bring more meetings and conventions here.

"I think we need to look at another large hotel," she says. "The hotel community feels we're probably fine, but there've been times when it's been a challenge to get the number of committed rooms needed for a convention. We need to do a lodging study so we can define our needs based on research."

She's also concerned about securing and maintaining funding for the CVB, a frustration her predecessor, Harry Sladich, had voiced before he left the post in April to become vice president of sales and marketing for Spokane-based Red Lion Hotels Corp.

"Communities have a growing strain on local funding for programs, including funding for tourism. That's not unique to Spokane, but when the budget's tight, you don't want to take funding away from organizations that create more revenue," she says. "Visitors pay taxes here, and then go home. We don't have to build roads or extend sewers for them. Not funding tourism will have the reverse effect of what (governments) really need, which is more money."

Kilday believes that revenues from the relatively new Tourism Promotion Area here will allow the CVB to be more competitive in attracting tourist dollars. The TPA levies a $2 per day tax that guests pay on hotel and motel rooms in the city of Spokane, the city of Spokane Valley, and unincorporated Spokane County.

"Before the Tourism Promotion Area, we didn't have the means to be competitive. We're now in the early stages of getting a bigger voice in getting people to come to Spokane," she says.

"People from Europe and other places want to come see 'the real deal.' They want to get out and see something else besides America's top five cities," Kilday says. She says she also will make sure Spokane is included in the state's tourism efforts.

"I know what it is to get involved to make sure our perspective is part of the big picture," she says.

Kilday is especially keen on bringing writers to Spokane who contribute to lifestyle, travel, and food and wine magazines.

"I want to get people here to write a story about Spokane. A consumer believes what they read in those materials. It's viewed as more authentic than materials we generate here."

She says she also has been having discussions within the CVB about how to reach out to American Indian cultures here. "They have stories that need to be collected and interpreted," she says.

Kilday is well-versed in Pacific Northwest culture, having grown up in Mukilteo and Olympia, in Western Washington. She attended Willamette University, in Salem, Ore., where she graduated with majors in psychology and sociology.

She began her career in tourism as reservations manager and then sales and catering manager at a Salem hotel. Then she became director of convention sales and assistant director for the Salem Convention and Visitors Association, where she worked until 1993.

"I'm in tourism today because my parents were explorers in love with the mountains and the Sound," she says. She fondly remembers road trips to her parents' native Texas.

"When I was a kid, we would go to Texas all the time. We would stop at vantage points and museums. We would talk to the locals at lunch counters. We did all the things that make travel fun," she says.

Kilday says Spokane has many government officials, hotel and restaurant workers, and travel agents who are "certified tourism ambassadors." That means they took a class and passed a test on aspects of tourism, our regional attributes and attractions, and customer service. They must renew the certification annually.

"Spokane has been very successful in this program," Kilday says. "We have the highest percentage of renewals in the nation. We're like the community to beat. Anaheim wants to beat us."

She has ideas on the type of national events she'd like to see come to Spokane, but says, "I need to understand our relationship with the sports commission to make sure I'm not stepping on any toes."

She also plans to go after more conventions and trade shows for "associations, corporations, and the military." She says it's cost effective to assign a staff member to become an expert on an organization's particular type of meetings.

Kilday says she sees potential in getting the Spokane area more well-known as a wine country, as she did in Virginia. Visit Loudoun created a 15-page brochure touting the county's wine industry there.

"We worked at bringing wineries together with towns to make it a 'wine country' experience," she says.

She also worked at persuading restaurants to offer local wines by the glass.

"If you're promoting a wine country to visitors, they have to have local wine at dinner," Kilday says.

She also believes the CVB could make Spokane a destination wedding spot. "I've only been here for two weeks, but already I've seen a number of wedding parties getting pictures taken in parks. It's a great place to get married. I'll have to catch up on how hard it is to get married here if you're from out of the area."

"Country estates and historical homes host a lot of weddings, as well as hotels and meeting facilities. It was a big part of what we worked with (in Virginia). We determined that wedding attendees that traveled there spent an average of $25,000 in a weekend. It was big business."

Kilday also is interested in developing agritourism here. She says that in Virginia, people who focus on eating local foods are called "locovores." She wants to figure out "how do you bring that to a visitor experience?"

Kilday says she's looking forward to bike riding on Spokane-area trails with her husband and 8-year-old son. She says she and her husband both come from musical families, so the performing arts are "a big part of our life."