PROVIDENCE –– You never know what Vice President Joe Biden might say, so news reporters tend to follow him around, just in case.

For a while, it looked as if the backdrop for the vice president’s next performance might be Rhode Island’s capital city. But the labor troubles that prompted 100 federal officials to skip the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Providence also warded off the vice president and Cabinet members.

That setback has not only caused headaches for meeting planners. A no-show by the event’s biggest names also robs Providence of a chance at national attention.

Without A-list panelists, public-relations experts say, there will be less chance the meeting proves newsworthy, and few reporters around to notice if it does.

“Celebrities are celebrities, they’ll generate attention,” said Roger Sametz, president of Sametz Blackstone Associates, a branding and communications firm in Boston. “They would increase the gravity of the event, and to keep with the planetary metaphor, the gravitational pull.”

Every year, the Providence Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau shows off the city to 40 writers, putting up small groups of travel-and-leisure journalists at Providence hotels and organizing dinners out and theater visits. The group also takes Providence on the road, cajoling local artists, retailers and chefs to travel to New York City to mingle with journalists at catered luncheons.

“It’s always helpful to get your name out there,” said Kristen Adamo, vice president for marketing for the group, funded in part by hotel taxes.

Those efforts occasionally pay off. In May, the New York Post included Providence among 100 destinations within a six-hour drive of New York City, selling it as “urban New England at its finest –– fascinating, fun and completely unpretentious.” Last August, The New York Times talked up the espresso in DePasquale Square and the gnocchi at Al Forno.

Adamo recently carried out a successful guerrilla campaign to get Providence included in Travel + Leisure magazine’s “America’s Favorite Cities” issue, begging in Twitter and Facebook posts for votes in the online contest.

But to broadly improve the city’s name recognition, Providence also relies on the events it hosts. In April, WWE wrestling at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center aired on national Pay Per View, the broadcast beginning with a shot of the city’s skyline. In 2006, ESPN broadcast from the arena for The Contender fights, and the network was there again in March for a Providence College basketball game against Miami.

Though Providence is not the subject of these broadcasts, commentators often chat about their dinner at Federal Hill or strolls downtown.

“It matters when you’re this type of destination. You’re not Los Angeles, you’re not Washington, D.C., you’re not New York City,” said James P. McCarvill, who runs the arena and the adjoining convention center. “It’s important to have a sense of being a destination, a place to go.”

An event like the mayors’ conference, McCarvill said, also demonstrates that the frenzied hotel construction in recent years has given the city enough rooms to accommodate large groups.

Conventions ignored by CNN, however, still make a sound. Despite disappointment over the vice presidential snubbing, tourism officials say this weekend’s event will strengthen the state’s feeble economy.

The convention is expected to generate $2 million in hotel room rentals and official activities. That does not count the money the 1,000 conventioneers –– freed from the glass-walled meeting hall –– will drop on taxi rides, sightseeing and souvenirs.

The Convention Center itself will bring in $200,000 in rent and food and beverage sales, and call in 100 hourly workers to cook and serve meals, set up stages and man audio-visual equipment. The surge in activity is key as the warm weather slows business during a year of already slumping revenue.

If they like what they see in Providence –– and in the glossy tourism pamphlets in the Convention Center lobby –– conventioneers may come back for a Newport vacation, or pitch Providence for their next business meeting.

Still, the presence of high-ranking politicians would have given Providence a chance to strut its stuff before a national audience.

“That could’ve been something we could have made a big deal about,” said Brian Gross, a creative partner at NAIL, a Providence design and marketing firm that is designing the convention center’s new Web site. “To get that attention normally is nearly impossible. We could have done something big, like painting a building pink, something really different or interesting.”

bgedan@projo.com