New York City Tourism + Conventions Created 25 Custom Delegate Passes and Boosted Usage by 33%, With Minimal Effort

Background 

Danny Rincon is the Director of Destination Services for New York City Tourism + Conventions. He’s been there over a decade, and even before his time, the DMO saw the importance of having a discount pass for meeting attendees. He said the tool was much different when he started, though. 

“It was an 8-page PDF. You'd look at it, and it was like reading a textbook,” he said. “It wasn't user-friendly, it was a lot of work on the backend, and nobody used it.” In 2022, they ditched the paper savings pass, and started working with Bandwango to create the digital NYC Delegate Pass. 

“It just seemed like a no-brainer,” Rincon said.

“It’s so much work off our plates.”

He said he also appreciates the reporting data that he now has access to. “We can actually track how much use it gets.” 

Scaling Personalization with White-Labeled Passes 

While the move from a paper to a digital savings pass for meeting delegates was a success for New York City Tourism + Conventions, Rincon got creative and strategic when Bandwango offered new updates to the platform. He said, “We've had clients want to customize the Delegate Pass, but previously, we didn’t have the bandwidth.”

Several things changed at Bandwango in 2025, though, and with the launch of the new Experience Builder, partners had the ability to create more passes in a much quicker and easier way. So now, New York City Tourism + Conventions can offer that personalized, requested service –  and it’s been a game-changer. Check out an example of what they built for attendees of the Anime NYC Convention HERE. 

“What's been really big for us has been the white labeling, which is just a relabel of the existing pass,” explained Rincon. “It’s incredible, because we can include it as part of our partnerships as a deliverable to them, and give them a customized Delegate Pass.” 

Creating a new pass for different groups that come to town seems like it could be a daunting task, but he said it isn’t. “It's probably 30 minutes worth of work on my end, at most,” shared Rincon. 

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The Ease of Creating a Customized Pass for Meeting Delegates 

Rincon creates the pass within Experience Builder, and includes the same deals that are on their overarching Delegate Pass. He explained, “The product that people are using is ultimately the Delegate Pass with a different logo on it.” The personalized pass includes customized branding for whatever group it is being made for.

He then works with his development team to create a landing page for each group.

“The whole process can be done in less than a day. The way the Bandwango software is set up is really straightforward,” he said. “We figured out a process and now it works very seamlessly.”

This is designed to make attendees feel like they have something that’s exclusive to their group. It makes the meeting planner feel good about bringing their group to the destination as well, because the white-labeled pass appears as something that they created for their attendees. The DMO doesn’t care who gets the credit – they just want happy clients and attendees. The personalized white-labeled delegate passes have become a valuable tool that the New York City Tourism + Conventions sales team uses to help solidify business. “It’s been a huge benefit,” said Rincon.

“It’s like adding a tool to the suite of services that we offer, but we haven't had to do any work on our end, which is incredible.” 

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Results

The shift didn’t just improve internal efficiency. It also delivered measurable results.

• 33% increase in delegate passholders (2025 vs. 2024) 

• 25 customized white-labeled passes created in one year, with minimal effort
  “It’s such an easy process,” said Rincon. “It adds almost no time at all.” 

• NYC Tourism + Conventions now has the ability to track performance by individual group

“It was already nice to be able to see how many people use the pass, but now we can actually look at an individual level and see which groups have been more or less active,” said Rincon. “It's a scale we could have never imagined.”

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Tips for Creating an Attendee Savings Pass From New York City Tourism + Conventions

Rincon has succeeded in finding a way to create a unique and personal product for his clients and attendees. He’s also shared several best practices for other destinations looking to build or improve their own delegate pass. 

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Use it as a tool for your sales team to pitch to prospective clients. 

"It's definitely something the sales team talks about with clients when they're in the pitching phase. You know, sometimes people will ask,  ‘If we pick New York, what kind of support do we get?’ And obviously we have a number of tools that we offer, but being able to offer discounts to their attendees – especially at a time where people are really focused on how expensive things are – is definitely something clients ask about. Even when they don't ask about it, when we mention it to them, everyone's interested in it. It's just been a great tool to offer.”

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Offer a level of personalization.

By personalizing the Delegate Pass to include the logo of the client association that is hosting the event, you essentially make it appear to be a product that is something they put together for their attendees. 

“It makes the client look good,” Rincon shared. “But it also makes us look good because we're offering a fully customized service.”

The attendees win when you personalize it as well. “They think ‘They curated all these offers just for us.’ It's just the extra little touch of personalization that takes it to the next level.”

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Build a customized landing page for each group. 

Once New York City Tourism + Conventions creates a customized pass within Bandwango’s platform, they have their web development team create a customized landing page that can be shared with the group. The page is also personalized with the group’s logo and branding. Rincon explained, “I give the information to our web developer, and within another half an hour, he's built a landing page on our website, and that's it – it's good to go.”

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Make sure you’ve hidden your landing page. 

Since these passes are for a closed-audience and are only meant to end up in the hands of meeting delegates for particular groups, you’ll want to make sure your landing page is hidden. New York City Tourism + Conventions hasn’t had any issues with the non-delegates ending up with the white-label passes, though. “Those are all private links,” shared Rincon. “We're only giving the link to the planners we work with, and the planners are then responsible to get it to their attendees. By sending a hidden link, nobody is going to find it in a Google search.”

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Push businesses to offer good discounts. 

“It's nice to have a variety of offers available, but I think the most successful ones tend to be the ones that target the individual traveler, because the vast majority of people traveling for meetings are solo travelers,” said Rincon. “So, when you're offering a buy one, get one, or anything that involves a group of people, it tends to get less traction than, say, a 25% off one ticket.” 

He has conversations with participating businesses to encourage them to offer good discounts. Rincon said he would rather have fewer offers with better discounts, as opposed to more offers that are all 5% off. “If everyone's giving you 25% off what they're selling, you're going to get a lot more adoption that way. The bigger the discount, the better.”

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Review redemption data regularly. 

“I think for something that's evergreen, like the Delegate Pass, staying on top of offers is really important. Take a look at which offers are doing well and which ones aren't,” shared Rincon.

He refreshes the pass with new offers on an annual basis and uses reporting data to see which offers have performed the best. He then sends participating businesses an email based on how their offer has performed. 

“The data is there to dig into, which is nice. And it helps to target the outreach that you're doing in terms of getting the product to become what you want it to be.”

For businesses that have offers that aren’t performing as well, he sends a message to inquire about changing their discount. “Sometimes when I send those emails to the folks that are not getting many redemptions, and say, ‘Your offer isn't doing that great, would you like to change it up?’ They'll come back and ask what kind of offers do well. What's nice is that I can then pull out the top five offers and tell them the members that are doing really well, and what they're offering.” 

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Think of other use cases for your Bandwango license. 

New York City Tourism + Conventions has another evergreen savings pass called the NYC Tourism Pass that is used by the DMO’s travel trade team. They provide it as a resource for tour operators who are visiting New York City. 

The DMO also has another special pass that they are creating for the International Naval Review 250. Unlike the other white-labeled passes that are personalized for groups, but all use the same deals, this pass contains deeper discounts. It is only offered to visiting members of the military, and is only available for the one week that they’re in town for the event. “We want this to be a thank you to them, so we set a threshold,” explained Rincon. “Any businesses participating in this pass have to offer at least half off of their product, but some include completely complimentary offers.”

While INR 250 is a special event celebrating America’s 250th birthday, the DMO welcomes military personnel for one week each year and has created a special pass for members of the military for the past two years. Rincon said, “It's a great program.”

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Conclusion

What began as a way to modernize a longstanding delegate program has evolved into a scalable service that helps New York City Tourism + Conventions support their clients, improve attendee experience, and personalize the convention journey in one of the world’s largest cities. The team there has found a way to create maximum impact with minimal effort. 

“For anyone that wants to do a savings pass, this is a great solution,” Rincon said. “Especially for what the cost is – it’s very minimal for such a broad tech platform.”

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If you’re seeking ways to attract more groups and conventions to your destination, book a free demo with the Bandwango team to learn how to create your own customized delegate passes for attendees visiting your area. 

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