The Shreveport DDA and Visit Shreveport launched a conference badge program on March 26 — two days before this publication. The test: 6,000 AKA members in town for a regional conference. The model: show your badge, get a discount at participating downtown businesses.

Show Me Your Badge launched March 26, 2026. Conference attendees for the Alpha Kappa Alpha 94th South Central Regional Conference — approximately 6,000 members in Shreveport through March 29 — show their conference badge at a participating downtown business and receive a designated discount or promotion.

The program solves a specific problem that managed corridors have long struggled with: convention centers and hotels bring large groups to a city, but those groups often circulate within the convention venue and its immediate surroundings without discovering surrounding commercial corridors. The downtown district gets the economic activity associated with a major conference — foot traffic, visibility, ambient spending — only if it actively inserts itself into the visitor's itinerary.

The badge is a distribution mechanism. It gives a conference attendee a specific reason — a tangible benefit — to walk the two or three blocks from the convention venue to the downtown corridor. The DDA provides the managed environment; the CVB provides the event relationship; the badge creates the behavioral nudge.

The program is designed for continuity, not just the AKA conference. The model works for any event with badge-wearing attendees: legal conferences, medical meetings, association conventions, trade shows. If the infrastructure is in place, activating it for each new event requires only updating the participating merchant list and communicating the offer to the event organizer.