Source: Visit Huntington Beach; published by Exhibit City News Staff
Visit Huntington Beach (VHB), the official destination marketing organization for the city of Huntington Beach, has named Susan Valen as its new director of sales.
With several decades of experience, Valen, a Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) and member of the Society of Incentive Travel Executives (SITE), most recently served as the National Sales Director for the Long Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau for the past 13 years. While at Long Beach, Valen worked with city-wide convention, sporting, association and corporate groups to solidify the city selection and contracting for the Long Beach Convention Center as well as multiple hotels resulting in a positive economic impact for a breadth of companies and organizations.
“We are extremely pleased to have Susan join our team,” says Kelly Miller, president and CEO for Visit Huntington Beach. “With tourism rebounding and the return of meetings and conventions, it’s important that we have someone with Susan’s creativity and tenacity leading the effort to further position Huntington Beach as a top destination for meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions to convert more bookings for our partners.”
Prior to her tenure at Long Beach, Valen held director of sales and marketing manager positions at both Marriott and Hilton brands as well as similar positions with the IMPROV Comedy Clubs and Planet Hollywood. A native of Orange County, California, Valen is active in the Southern California chapters of the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) and Meeting Professionals International (MPI).
With its HB Collection, which includes four oceanfront resorts offering a collective 1,400 guest rooms and 185,000 square-feet of event and meeting space, Huntington Beach offers an enviable climate, walkable downtown and is served by three airports—Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Long Beach Airport (LGB) and Orange County’s John Wayne Airport (SNA)—making it easily accessible for groups to meet and convene. Nearly half of Huntington Beach’s total meeting space is outdoors, thus allowing for innovative, open air group events that create a gratifying meeting experience for groups of any size.
