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Explore the Neighborhoods of Long Beach, CA

Featuring: Steve Goodling

President & CEO , Long Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau

Discover all the people and places that make Long Beach so unique.

Commonly referred to as an urban waterfront playground, Long Beach has so much to offer to its visitors and locals. Rediscover America recently caught up with Joseph Jenci, a destination expert with The Long Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau. com along for the ride as Joseph shares all of his favorite Long Beach gems with us.

#1 DESSERT IN A JAR

WHO IS A LOCAL MAKER YOU LIKE SUPPORTING?

THE PIE BAR

The Pie Bar has the most amazing pies, from scratch, served in jars. It's such a cool and unique product. It travels well, ships well, and the quality of the pie is outstanding. My favorite flavor is the Key Lime pie!

#2 WALK THE CITY

shoreline village long beach

WHERE DO YOU BRING VISITORS TO SHOW THEM AN AUTHENTIC SIDE OF LONG BEACH?

WE WALK EVERYWHERE

One of the the things that I love most about Long Beach, that is so unique to the west coast, is how walkable it is. You have this amazing weather 365 days a year and you can actually be out in it and not sitting in traffic in your car. So when visitors come, I like to walk everywhere with them. One of my favorite places we walk to is a French fusion restaurant called BO-Beau.

"Long Beach is consistently voted one of the most walkable cities in North America" Joseph Jenci, Long Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau

#3 THE LOCAL'S SECRET

THE BLIND DONKEY LONG BEACH

WHAT IS THE BEST KEPT SECRET IN LONG BEACH?

THE BLIND DONKEY

The Blind Donkey is in the basement of an old hotel and you really have to know where it is to find it. Because it's harder to find, it tends to beIt very much a locals place. Fun fact, the bar was used to film the last scene in the movie La La Land. It's the coolest, hippest whiskey bar in town.

#4 CRUISE THE CANALS

gondola ride long beach

WHERE DO YOU GO TO GET AWAY FROM IT ALL?

OUT ON THE WATER

I love the sun and I love the ocean. There's a place where you can rent a gondola, just like in Venice, and they take you out on the bay. Theres nothing better than sitting in one of those gondolas being driven through the canals during sunset. It is magical!

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What Is A Destination Organization?

A destination organization is responsible for promoting a community as an attractive travel destination and enhancing its public image as a dynamic place to live and work.

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About the Contributor

Steve Goodling

President & CEO

About The Contributor

Steve Goodling has led the Long Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau (LBCVB) toward a path of innovation and modernization for nearly two decades. His background in hospitality stems from joining Marriott International when the company only had 100 hotels worldwide. He then progressed to Shangri-La Hotels, a Hong Kong-based company operating luxury resorts and hotels throughout the world. Steve helped to foster a strong customer centric focus in Long Beach and convention planners have responded positively to the results.

Northstar Meetings Group, which publishes Meetings & Conventions and Successful Meetings magazines with readerships of 34,000 and 72,000 respectively, has awarded the LBCVB as “Best in the West” for the last six years. The LBCVB won the Gold award five out of six years (winning silver once) for the Best CVB in the region with only one winner per category, beating out such great competition such as Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Diego, San Francisco, and Anaheim. These honors were also earned by the Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center for the past five years . . . earning “Gold” each time.

In 2022, the Long Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau took home the prestigious PCMA Chairman’s Award for the Americas, recognized alongside recipients from Germany and Singapore. This is the highest honor PCMA bestows, and is given annually to an organization for its unique achievements or contributions to the meetings industry in the previous year. PCMA is the world’s largest association for meeting planners.

Long Beach was selected for the award due to its efforts to house migrant children at the Convention Center during the summer of 2021, going above and beyond to ensure that they were not only safe and well cared for, but that they had a wealth of enrichment activities and resources. At the request of the Mayor and City, which in short term amassed more than 100,000 donations for the children. What further impressed the judges was that the CVB led the CVB creating a marketing campaign, designed an infrastructure program with hotels, handled the logistics of delivering them to center,


By hosting the TED Conference for several years, Steve accessed and incorporated many of their future forward concepts and deployed those into creating three “turnkey” special event spaces. The new Pacific Ballroom, the Cove, and the Terrace Theater Plaza. All have permanent LED stage lighting, rigging, etc., thus saving convention clients significant amounts of money in creating special events. This concept allowed associations with limited budgets to host corporate style events at a significant savings, and they then put these savings back into a higher quality food experience. It also allowed convention planners to fulfill another major trend desired by their attendees, an “Instagramable” and unique experience, not to be found anywhere else. Both convention planners and clients loved the new venues, as well as the local Long Beach community, which began to have many fundraising events in these venues.



Being the first in the industry with this concept, this innovation gained national attention and Steve was recognized by Venues Today and indoctrinated into their Hall of Fame.



Steve has also been recognized as one of the “Top 25 Most Influential People in the Meetings Industry” by Successful Meetings magazine, a leading industry publication, which touted Long Beach and Steve as a “Trailblazer.” In addition, BizBash magazine, a leading publication focused on large-scale special events, inducted Steve into its prestigious Hall of Fame.



Due to Covid and the acceleration of the adaption of virtual digital technologies, Steve’s newest venture is converting the entire convention center campus to an interactive broadcast experience . . . bringing together convention attendees remotely as well as those around the world to participate in a Long Beach based convention. This effort was recently recognized in Successful Meetings for being the first convention center to do so in the nation.



Steve has been highly engaged in the community and has served on various boards such as Musica Angelica, International City Theater, CCEJ (the CA Center for Equality and Justice) and the Ukleja Center for Ethical Leadership at California State University Long Beach.