The Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau (GMCVB) Tourism Business Enhancement Program and the Miami Bayside Foundation Partner on a Small Business Training Series
MIAMI – The Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau (GMCVB) Tourism Business Enhancement Program (TBE) and the Miami Bayside Foundation (MBF) partner on a training that will assist and enhance the capacity of small businesses to grow.
The GMCVB’s TBE Program was launched May 2016 to target small multicultural businesses in Miami’s heritage communities that directly or indirectly affect the hospitality and tourism industry. The goal is to enhance business capacity to reach and benefit from the growing tourism industry.
The GMCVB provides participants access to workshops, one-on-one consulting, technical assistance, and business resources designed to help more community businesses leverage the vast promotional support of the GMCVB.
The narrative of the Tourism Business Enhancement Program is to create stronger and more sustainable tourism-related businesses and attractions in Miami’s heritage communities.
In September 2015, MBF launched its first series of Small Business Training workshops, a 10-session twenty-five-hour training for minority-owned City of Miami businesses.
The workshops instruct in, among other things, compliance, intellectual property, access to capital, credit, banking, IT requirements, human resources, leases, marketing, certifications, finances, budgets, and creating an executive summary to present to funders (the actual syllabus is adapted to the attendees in each series).
The summer 2017 workshop will be held in partnership with GMCVB, the City of Miami, and Mayor Regalado at the Little Haiti Cultural Center. In the past, the GMCVB workshops have been held in Little Havana, West Coconut Grove and Historic Overtown.
MBF workshops have been held at CAMACOL, Continental Bank, International Finance Bank, and the Little Haiti Cultural Center.
Connie Kinnard Vice President of the Multicultural Tourism & Development Department with GMCVB states “This partnership is timely and a way to impact a critical mass of businesses and resources vital to sustain and energize local assets and tourist attractions such as restaurant, food and beverage establishments, museums, churches historic sites, as well as other service and business sectors.”
Kathleen Murphy, Executive Director of MBF, commented, “Working closely with small businesses, we understand many of their needs and what is required for them to get to the next level. I believe that this partnership helps reach businesses fundamental to Miami. I am very excited about the caliber and level of the eighteen (18) businesses selected to participate in the summer training program.”
There will be three sets of workshops during 2017.
Since 2015, MBF has held a total of six series of workshops providing more than 100 small business owners with essential tools and skills to grow their companies.
Each business owner graduates with a certificate of completion upon attending 80% of the classes and presenting an Executive Business Summary for review. During the last class, the students have a chance to present their Executive Summaries to funders that include banks and alternative lenders.
GMCVB and MBF will offer ten (10) sessions from July 18 through August17 that will be held at the Little Haiti Cultural Center. More than 12 local experts from relevant industries will be participating as guest lecturers and mentors.
GMCVB and MBF are excited about this collaboration and about helping these businesses get to the next level.
