San Francisco loses 2 big conferences
News emerged Thursday that two tech companies, Meta and Red Hat, called off 2024 conferences that were set to be held at San Francisco's Moscone Center — marking another gloomy headline about SF's downtown, which has struggled ever since COVID-19.
But while convention bookings have yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels, the San Francisco Travel Association, which manages bookings at Moscone, said the industry is showing signs of recovery.
“While next year is a challenging year for conventions in San Francisco, every year after 2024 shows steady growth, with 2028 and beyond trending to be above 90% of the average,” Lori Lincoln, a spokesperson for SF Travel, wrote in an email.
Lincoln said that even before the pandemic, in 2019, the agency anticipated that conventions would be down in 2024 given it's an off year for rotational events and the association had already received some cancellations. “The situation was then exacerbated by the pandemic,” she said.
The San Francisco Business Times was the first to publicly report the cancellations Thursday, but SF Travel said Red Hat canceled in November 2022 and Meta in February and that this information had been shared with stakeholders.
Red Hat, a software company owned by IBM, called off both the 2024 and 2025 events at Moscone Center, which together were expected to generate some 40,000 hotel stays, according to the Business Times. Red Hat rebooked its 2024 event in Denver and the 2025 one in Orlando.
The canceled Meta Business Group Summit 2024 was anticipated to bring about 16,254 hotel stays, the Times said. SF Travel said that Meta had hoped to replace its early May booking with a different event but was unable to do so and subsequently fully canceled.
SF Travel said Red Hat is scheduled for events at Moscone in 2026, 2028, 2030 and 2032.
Conventions are a key part of the city's travel industry, generating hotel and hospitality revenue. In 2019, Moscone Center booked a record 49 events, accounting for 968,000 hotel room nights. 2020 and 2021 saw steep declines, with just seven and five convention bookings, respectively. Bookings rebounded in 2022 with 33 events that generated 338,549 hotel room nights; this year's 36 confirmed events are expected to account for over 663,000 hotel nights.
There are 22 events confirmed at Moscone Center in 2024, accounting for some 462,000 hotel room nights. “Our ongoing strategy for 2024 is to secure more corporate events to tackle the anticipated decrease in hotel rooms attributed to Moscone Center events,” Lincoln said. “These have a shorter lead time than citywide conventions and will likely take place in hotels because of their smaller size. In 2022, 75% of group room nights were for events outside of Moscone Center.”
Meta and Red Hat did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Source: SFGATE
