More than 1,500 rooms were occupied for a night when Kari Holt Larson, the Utah Athletic Foundation's business and events manager, arranged for the International Skating Union to hold its 2007 World Single Distance Championships at Utah Olympic Oval in Kearns.

And the Stampin' Up! team of Dale Fillmore, Shelli Gardner, Don Richardson and Brent Steele contributed to their scrapbooking company's decision to stage its annual conventions from 2008 through 2010 in Salt Lake County, filling more than 8,000 hotel rooms in each of those years.

For that assistance, the Salt Lake Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB) will honor them and four others today as ambassadors who have "gone above and beyond the call of duty in their tireless work to convince their groups or associations that Salt Lake is 'the place' for their conventions and events," said CVB President Scott Beck.

"It's amazing what just one person can do to have such a positive economic impact on our community," he added.

Last year, Beck said, CVB officials booked conventions for future years that are expected to generate $199 million worth of economic impact for Salt Lake County. These bookings included 365 groups with 227,199 attendees, who will spend 363,840 nights in hotel rooms.

Other honorees this morning will be boxing enthusiasts Larry Fullmer and Rick Montoya, who helped attract USA Boxing's Western region boxing trials to the Salt Palace Convention Center last month, filling 1,200 hotel rooms; Elyce Jones of Omniture, whose 2005-08 summits for users of the company's computer software will fill up to 5,000 hotel rooms annually; and Duane Cardall, who was instrumental in the National Conference of Editorial Writers' decision to hold their annual convention here in 2009, filling 560 hotel rooms in Salt Lake County.

- Mike Gorrell