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TAYLOR STANDS POISED ON THE MAIN STAGE. SHE'S an exotic dance, but right now, at this exact moment, with music blaring and lights flashing, she's not dancing. She's crouching, bent at the knee, waiting eagerly and patiently at eye level for her customer to tuck under her G-string the $5 bill he's neatly folded lengthwise.

Taylor and other dancers like her can make about 1 a night taking off their clothes and getting very familiar with men's laps. To some Dallas citizens, particularly some on the City Council, such a sexually oriented business is distasteful and offensive. Others, however, see Taylor's flirtations and gyrations as entertaiment-risque yet legal entertainment. Ask Taylor and she'll say she's just doing her job.

When Dick Martinez, a senior vice president of the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau, took a client to a gentlemen's club, he was just doing his job, too. He was honoring the request of his guest, For employees at the CVB, the rule was, with prudence, you did whatever the client decided to do. Salespeople for the bureau are partly tour guides of the city. They are also obliging hosts for the meeting planners who book conventions for organizations that bring thousands of people to Dallas. A $1,000 dinner can lead to a $10 million convention. Sad but true: a five-minute lap dance might mean a threeyear commitment. In the convention industry, such expenses are understood and expected, as are receipts for liquor and Mavs tick ets and town-car services. They are all part of the system of selling Dallas.

Until recently, the system worked fine, generating billions of dollars of business in Dallas and making the city a leading convention destination, despite a dearth of unique tourist attractions. But a sluggish economy, skittish travelers, an anemic city budget, and a convention center under construction have led to a sharp decline in convention business for Dallas, And that was before the expense scandal that led to the resignation of CVB chairman Chris Luna and president Dave Whitney in January and before the City Council in March imposed the smoking ban on the city's top convention venues. Add up all the factors-some outside the city's control, some caused directly by the city's actions-and you have what many in the convention business inside and outside Dallas are calling a Perfect Storm. The result might cost Dallas-us-billions in lost business.

The CVB is a largely misunderstood organization. It is part of Dallas government but it's not, funded with tax dollars but not really. Nonprofit and independent, the CVB is a marketing firm for the city. Its budget comes from the occupancy tax, about 2 cents for every dollar spent on a hotel room, totaling about $11 million last year (down from $16 million pre-9/11). Unless you're staying at a hotel in your hometown, that's other people's money. The bureau spends a large chunk of the money showing off Dallas to meeting planners and organization sponsors, convincing them that Dallas is the perfect venue for their convention, that our amenities are unrivaled, that our services are unmatched. If you bring, say, the Helicopter Association International's annual North American event here, attendees will flock by the thousands.

For a conventioneer, the three- or four-day excursion can mean anything from a waste of time to an invaluable learning experience to an expense-account junket of good food and lascivious entertainment. For the city that hosts such a gathering, it means big money, a time when the hospitality industry and everyone else gets to cash in. Attendees spend a total of about $290 a day on hotels, food, shopping, transportation, and tourist attractions. The sponsoring organizations and exhibitors spend another $70 per day per delegate. With an average stay of 3.9 days per visitor, that means billions of dollars for the local economy. Over the past seven years, Dallas has averaged 3,600 meetings per year, with 3.8 million attendees and local expenditures of more than $4.2 billion.

With so much money at stake, competition among convention cities is fierce, now more than ever, as that Perfect Storm threatens to strike. That is, if it hasn't struck already. Meeting planners schedule events years in advance, making it difficult to gauge how dramatically the elements have affected us. Here's what we're having to contend with:

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

"A DOWN ECONOMY" HAS REPLACED "THE dog ate my homework" as the most overused excuse of late-and with good reason. Everything from corporate bankruptcy to a missed sale can be blamed on a down economy, which includes the depleted coffers on the city, state, and national levels. In times of pinched pennies, the convention business and hospitality industry are the first and hardest hit. With companies struggling to meet their numbers, travel budgets vanish, and airlines and hotels consequently suffer. Suddenly, one of Dallas' main moneymakers, DFW Airport, is not producing the inflow of cash we're accustomed to. Dallas has always been an attractive city for conventions because of its accessibility and convenience. The city is no farther than four hours away from every major city in North America, and there are more nonstop flights to distinctly different destinations than anywhere else in the world. But no out-of-town passengers on those Dallas-bound planes means no out-of-town money, either.

Under Construction

AFTER THE AIRPORT, THE BIGGEST LURE DALLAS presents to potential conventions is the Dallas Convention Center. In 1998, city officials approved $128 million for the expansion of the facility, which re-opened September 28, 2002. Newer halls across the country were offering more room, and the larger conventions had outgrown Dallas. The renovated building now includes more than 1 million square feet of exhibit and meeting space. And Dallas now boasts The World's Largest Singular, Column-free Exhibit Hall." That may not impress you, but unobstructed views are a big draw. With the new space, Dallas can now vie for the mammoth, expensive conventions that were too big to consider us.

"The Convention Center was a concrete barn," says Greg Elam, senior vice president of communications at the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau. "Now it's of equal quality to facilities everywhere else."

There are only a couple of problems.

For one thing, Dallas isn't the only city that's updating its meeting space. Doug Ducate, president of the Chicago-based Center for Exhibition Industry Research (you knew there had to be one), notes that while the Dallas Convention Center is now competitive, the competition has never been keener. He says there are 21 new buildings under construction and 70 expansions that will open between now and 2006. That's in addition to all of the new facilities that have opened in the last two years. After all that work, Dallas is the sixth-largest center in the country, which is where it was before the expansion began.

Plus, the convention center was under construction for years, a fallow period of hammers and drills during which bookings were understandably down. But future bookings also suffered. Imagine taking a tour of a fancy, amenity-filled house that's already built compared to one still in the works. "It's going to be great," the salesman might say. "You just have to trust us."

No One to Mind the Store

EVEN THOUGH THE EXPANSION IS COMPLETED, there's still a problem with the convention center. Nobody is there to run it. "There's no professional manager in the building," Ducate says. "Shows are going away and saying, 'We aren't coming back to Dallas because the service was so poor in the convention center. There's frustration in dealing with these amateurs that you have in responsible positions in the building. I'm not saying these aren't good people, I'm just saying, as compared to your competition, you've got to have a professional manager [helping to] sell the convention center."

In November, the City Council shot down a proposal to privatize the operations of the convention center. Private authorities manage convention centers in Atlanta, Las Vegas, and New Orleans, but Dallas councilmembers still have confidence that the city can run the building.

Dallas City Manager Ted Benavides says he is conducting a nationwide search for a new building manager. If so, it must be a hard position to fill: the last permanent manager, Mina Boyd, resigned a year ago.

"We have a new convention center that, if we are not careful, will be the largest columnfree bowling alley in America," said Dallas CVB chairman Chris Luna before he resigned.

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