Nashville Visitors Corp. starts Amazon-sponsored minority business accelerator

The Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp. recognized earlier this year, in its planning document guiding Music City tourism growth, that all communities have not benefitted equally from the city’s rocketing popularity over the last decade, and minority-owned businesses are underrepresented in the NCVC.

Now, the organization that heads up Nashville’s tourism marketing and branding is making moves to accelerate the growth of minority-owned businesses. It’s launching a minority business accelerator through an Amazon partnership, taking inspiration from a similar program that the San Diego Tourism Authority runs in California.

Details of the new accelerator were revealed a month after the Nashville Black Hospitality Group was launched by Nashville event planner and Fisk University professor Sharanda Smith “to empower African Americans in the hospitality industry.”

After applications close on Nov. 1, 15 businesses owned by minorities, women, veterans and those identifying as LGBTQ will be selected to the first cohort of the NCVC-led program, officially titled “Music City Chart Climbers: Amplifying Diverse Hospitality presented by Amazon.” They will receive a year-long free membership to the NCVC and a discount on their second-year membership.

“The CVC has really been engaging and focusing on diverse and minority-owned businesses for at least 20 years,” NCVC President and CEO Deana Ivey said. “We want to build up our members, but more importantly, it’s to have those businesses on our radar to be able to showcase them to visitors, whether they’re leisure visitors or convention delegates.”

Participants in the accelerator will also receive a “monetary gift to invest in their business” following completion of eight two-hour-long learning sessions on marketing, public relations, sales, finance and other topics related to the hospitality industry. Ivey said the funding for those gifts will come from Amazon, but she did not specify the amount.

Programming will begin in January 2025.

The announcement of the program came one week after local event planner Sharanda Smith sat down with The Tennessean to discuss how she organized over 100 Black business owners to form the Nashville Black Hospitality Group.

Formed earlier this year, Smith’s group aims to attract some of the city’s billions in tourism-generated dollars to Black-owned businesses. She estimates that less than 1% of the total $10 billion in tourism revenue from 2023 went to Black businesses.

Ivey said the NCVC’s minority business accelerator has been in the works for over a year and was initially scheduled to roll out in August, before the team decided it needed more time to organize the programming. Ivey also said she hopes support from groups like the NBHG, the Nashville Black Chamber of Commerce, the Nashville Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and Tennessee Pride will help spread the word across the city.

“Ensuring equitable access to economic opportunity is a key effort Nashville must undertake as a city,” Mayor Freddie O’Connell said in a statement. “Ensuring minority businesses have access to our ever-growing hospitality industry is a good step in that direction.”

Hadley Hitson covers business news for The Tennessean. She can be reached at hhitson@gannett.com. To support her work, subscribe to The Tennessean.