Hotel bookings indicate conventions are waning
By: Joshua Sabatini
Examiner Staff Writer
March 16, 2009
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Falling convention business is expected to hurt hotel bookings and city tax revenue. (Cindy Chew/The Examiner.)
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SAN FRANCISCO — After having one of the strongest performances in 2008, San Francisco’s convention business is projected to have one of its weakest year’s in 2010.
San Francisco’s No. 1 industry is tourism, and annually the convention business contributes a huge chunk of tax revenue from visitors.
The health of The City’s convention business is often measured by hotel bookings. They are important for The City’s budget since a hotel-room tax is collected on every stay. In addition, those who stay in hotels during conventions spend money on residual taxable businesses, such as restaurants, retail shops and taxis.
In 2008, events at The City’s SoMa convention site, the Moscone Center, resulted in nearly 993,000 overnight hotel bookings, the strongest convention year since 2003, according to San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau.
In 2007, 35 percent of those who stayed overnight in hotels, about 756,000, were convention-related. They generated $174 million in tax revenue.
Hotel bookings, however, are down this year from the previous year by about 160,000. Next year, only about 750,000 hotel rooms are booked.
Dan Goldes, executive vice-president of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the drop in 2010 business is more about how national conventions rotate locations and less about the economy, since events are booked years in advance. The downturn in the economy seems to be more of a concern for the already-booked events.
To boost Moscone Center bookings, the Convention and Visitors Bureau is aggressively offering promotional discounts for meeting planners. The bureau is also working with meeting planners who already booked events, as the economic downturn has some attendees thinking twice about coming to the events.
“We are working very, very aggressively to make sure the meetings that are booked here actually materialize the number of attendees they thought they were going to get when they booked the group,” Goldes said.
In order to drum up convention business, Convention and Visitors Bureau officials and Mayor Gavin Newsom are scheduled to visit Chicago and Washington, D.C., in May to help sell The City to planners. They made a similar trip last year.
Empty hotels
Convention-related bookings have decreased this year and are expected drop to again in 2010.
| Year | Bookings |
| 2004 | 848,874 |
| 2005 | 780,859 |
| 2006 | 844,398 |
| 2007 | 755,898 |
| 2008 | 992,843 |
| 2009 | 835,810 |
| 2010 | 749,574 |
| 2011 | 846,547 |
| 2012 | 739,847 |
Sources: Convention and Visitors Bureau, PKF Hospitality Research
