Beth Belt was responsible last year for booking conventions that will result in 88,000 Salt Lake County hotel rooms being filled with out-of-town guests in future years-people who will inject $60 million into the local economy.

For that productive year, her name will be attached to the first Dianne Nelson Binger Scholarship being given by the Salt Lake Convention & Visitors Bureau to a female student studying parks, recreation and tourism at the University of Utah.

The $1,500 annual scholarship will be supplemented this year with an additional $3,500 contribution, part of an effort to build a $50,000 endowment that will generate an annual scholarship worth $2,500.

Belt joined the bureau in 1993 as director of convention sales for the Western corporate market. Among her big coups last year was confirming that Meeting Professionals International will stage its World Education Congress in Salt Lake City in 2009.

This organization is particularly important because it includes 3,500 corporate meeting planners and industry professionals who, if they like what they see in 2009, could direct numerous other conventions to Utah's capital city. MPI is the world's largest association for meeting professionals, with more than 20,000 members in 66 chapter and clubs in 60 countries.

"Beth [Belt] epitomizes our entire sales staff of well-seasoned professionals. She's a top booker for Salt Lake, is a team player and gets the job done with style, passion and grace," said bureau President and CEO Scott Beck.

Overall, Belt's convention sales team booked 390,000 future room nights last year.

Belt came to the bureau from Little America Hotel. She previously worked with Morris Murdoch Travel.

The scholarship is named after Binger, bureau president from 2001 until 2005, when she died of cancer at the age of 54. She had been with the bureau since 1987, when she was hired as a convention sales director. She was promoted to vice president of convention sales in 1993 and became senior vice president in 1998. A native of Buffalo, N.Y., her hospitality career started at Alta's Rustler Lodge.

In recognition of her work, the bureau posthumously honored Binger with its Lifetime Achievement Award. She is only the third recipient, following Ken Knight in 1997 and Rick Davis, her predecessor as bureau president, in 2002.

Said Davis, in presenting the award to her family: "Today, if you walk through bureau offices, you will see Dianne's photo on many office walls and cubicles. She is still a role model. Her courage and stamina were awesome. She was supportive and considerate, elegant, classy and graceful. She made each person she talked with feel important."

mikeg@sltrib.com