Butch Spyridon

Butch Spyridon has served as president and CEO of the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp (NCVC) since 1991. He has served as the chief architect of the city’s Music City brand with Nashville evolving into a top global and year-round destination for meeting and leisure visitors and a major source of economic activity for the region. The hospitality industry is the city’s second largest with annual visitor spending generating $6 billion, accounting for a third of the entire direct domestic and international travel expenditures in the state.

Under Spyridon’s leadership, Music City has landed on a long list of national publications, and the number of visitors to Nashville has grown to 14 million in 2016. Since December 2010, Nashville has experienced year-over-year growth in hotel rooms sold for 74 out of 75 months. The city was ranked the No. 9 meeting destination in the country in 2015 by Cvent. For the past five years, it has been named a Top Destination in the World by multiple major travel publications.

Over the past 25 years, the NCVC has led the strategic development of Nashville’s emergence as a top travel destination and been involved with major city-led projects, including the recruitment of the Tennessee Titans and construction of Nissan Stadium; development of Bridgestone Arena and bringing the Nashville Predators to town; the 2.1 million-square-foot Music City Center; and the city’s riverfront Ascend Amphitheater.

In addition to these civic projects, the NCVC actively works to promote the globally- recognized Music City brand through several initiatives:
• Producing the nationally ranked Music City July 4th: Let Freedom Sing! and New Year’s Eve in Music City.
• Created the Music City Walk of Fame to honor individuals who have significantly contributed to Nashville’s music legacy.

In October 2016, Spyridon was named an Honorary Fisk Jubilee Singer.

Raised in Pascagoula, Mississippi, Spyridon graduated from Vanderbilt University with a B.A. in Business Administration. He is a graduate of the Institute of Comparative Political and Economic Systems at Georgetown University. He and his wife, Sunny, have four children and three grandchildren.