Second in a two-day series on leadership at the Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau.
With the retirement of the Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau’s (CVB) longtime leader Tracy Kimberlin, a nationwide search brought Mark Hecquet to Springfield to take the reins.
Kimberlin, who is retiring on Dec. 31, is the longest serving president of the CVB, having served in the role for the past 35 years. Hecquet (pronounced Heck-ee), will assume the role Jan. 17.
Springfield is new to Hecquet, but he believes having a visitor’s perspective could benefit him in his new role. Paired with his previous experiences in the tourism industry in an Ohio community with similarities to Springfield, he is looking forward to both working and immersing himself in the community.
“I'm excited to work with a really talented bunch of tourism professionals and further evolve the organization and look at ways to make travel and tourism the best it can be,” Hecquet said.
Joe Wadkins, CVB board president, helped lead a national search process that employed SearchWide Global, an executive search firm from St. Paul, Minn.
“We were very excited to find Mark,” Wadkins said in a press release. “He was a unanimous choice. We had some great candidates, but he stood out. We believe he will be a great addition to the CVB team and a good fit in the community.”
Hecquet brings experience, international perspective to Springfield’s tourism industry
Hecquet is a Briton, born and raised just outside of London. In 1992, he moved to the U.S. to attend the University of Kentucky, where he obtained a master’s degree in sports management and worked in their athletics program. It was also there that he met his wife, a native of nearby Cincinnati.
Inexperienced in the tourism industry, he applied for a job to create a sports marketing initiative in Warren County, Ohio, and was hired and worked there for five years. Having made a name for himself, neighboring Butler County, which houses northern suburbs of Cincinnati, approached Hecquet about forming their own Visitors Bureau.
Hecquet, ready for the next step in his career, helped build from scratch Travel Butler County, which he has been leading for the past 16 years. He is proud of his time there, where he oversaw community engagement initiatives and development projects, including the massive $165 million sports facility Spooky Nook, which is currently undergoing their phased opening.
“But to be honest, I looked at my career and felt that perhaps it was time for that organization to stand on its own without me,” Hecquet said in an interview with the Hauxeda.
At that point, he wasn’t actively searching for a new job. However, Hecquet was searched for by Springfield and a new opportunity found him.
“So I came, and I immediately felt very embraced by the culture of Springfield,” he said. “I felt very welcomed. That was my first sort of impression of Springfield, and what I was really enamored about.”
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A familiar face in a familiar (feeling) city
Sean FitzGibbons, the executive director of the History Museum on the Square in Springfield, used to work with the same title at Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park in the Butler County seat, Hamilton.
In addition to running Travel Butler County, Hecquet served on the board at Pyramid Hill, and was on a search committee of his own that found and hired FitzGibbons.
“He was very supportive of Pyramid Hill and was very willing to let me bother him about a lot of marketing issues, a lot of bouncing ideas back and forth,” FitzGibbons said. “…He has done a lot of great things in Butler County.”
The move to Springfield, like any move in mid-January, won’t be fun. But the transition to the Springfield community will be the easy part for Hecquet. FitzGibbons said Springfield and Greene County aren't unlike Butler County.
“There are a lot of similarities between Butler and Greene counties,” he said. “A lot of similar demographics, just in the jobs that are here, the attractions that are here.”
FitzGibbons said Hecquet’s experiences that helped make Butler County’s tourism industry thrive, as a separate entity from Cincinnati, would be a great asset to Springfield, and help the city stand apart from other nearby tourist attractions.
He specifically praised Hecquet’s work in sports tourism and promotion of small businesses. FitzGibbons traveled to Springfield a lot over the years, as his wife is from here, before eventually moving. Over the course of that time, from a visitor’s perspective, he has seen Springfield’s small business community develop and grow and thinks Hecquet can help further accelerate that.
“I am positive that Mark is going to come in with a lot of experience … and with a lot of new ideas,” he said.
Hecquet looks forward to next step in his career, with all that comes with it
From the short time he’s been here, and the research he’s done online, Hecquet said he can see the strengths of Springfield’s tourism industry, and that the CVB is “a very well-oiled machine” thanks to the work of Kimberlin and the rest of the organization.
“One of the things I'm most excited about is to immerse myself in the city of Springfield, to immerse myself in the culture of it, to learn about it, understand it, understand the people of it,” Hecquet said.
Based on what he’s seen, Hecquet is aware of the challenges tourism in Springfield faces, notably the city’s ability, or lack thereof, to host large conventions. His involvement in promoting the Spooky Nook development helped bring to Butler County the capacity to host large conventions, as it features significant amounts of conference spaces and banquet halls.
Hecquet thinks striking a balance between creating an industry that is good for both visitors and citizens of Springfield is the key to success.
“There's no point going down a path where it may solely be good for the visitor industry, but it doesn't really complement perhaps other avenues of the city,” he said.
Additionally, Hecquet believes being new to Springfield will lend itself to that success in a tourism sector that is already on an “upward trajectory.”
“I'm a visitor and that's kind of part of my job is I want to experience Missouri as a visitor,” he said. “My organization is there to talk to visitors, no one better than someone who has actually experienced it as a visitor.”
