Before he was elected two years ago, Bob Buckhorn made it known that he would travel far and wide to do what it takes to sell Tampa to the world. According to himself and other local business officials who recently returned from a business trip to Germany, it makes a difference that he is at the head of the table taking meetings.
"The level of success we had (would not have been possible) if the mayor had not been with us at the end head of the table, leading the delegation. This signaled a very strong commitment from the political leadership of the community that they were behind these kinds of operations," said Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corporation (EDC) President and CEO, Rick Homans, on Monday morning. Homans was commenting on the just completed trip that the EDC organized last week with local political and business leaders in Nuremburg, Munich and Frankfurt, Germany, as well as Zurich, Switzerland, all in an attempt to drum up business for the Tampa Bay area.
"When he's at the meeting, you tend to get a higher level of people to listen to you," added Tampa International CEO Joe Lopano, regarding Buckhorn's stature in the meetings.
Local officials would not name any of the companies whom they met with, though Lopano admitted in the news conference that they met with Lufthansa Airlines, Germany's biggest airline. We do know though, that some of the officials in attendance at the meetings were from aerospace, health care, computer software, and water recycling industries.
This article appears in Apr 18-24, 2013.