San Diego’s appeal as a tourist destination and its near-perfect weather helped elevate the city’s convention center ranking among the nation’s top five in a newly released survey, but lack of ample space and shortcomings in the surrounding downtown area kept it from garnering a higher score.
The Wall Street Journal, in a survey it released earlier this month, ranked San Diego’s bayfront facility No. 4 among the top 30 centers in the country, besting such heavyweights as Orlando and Atlanta and easily suring Southern California rivals in Los Angeles and Anaheim. Coming in at No. 1 was Las Vegas’ mega convention center, which boasts 2.5 million square feet of exhibit space and has the benefit of being just minutes from the Vegas strip and only three miles from the airport.
Unlike other similar surveys, the Journal’s ranking dived into a number of very specific factors to arrive at the final score, including proximity to the nearest airport, the closest dry cleaner and density of nearby restaurants and arts and entertainment venues.
It’s no surprise that San Diego fared less competitively in the areas of exhibition space and meeting rooms — ranking No. 17 and 23, respectively — given the city’s decade-long quest to expand the center, which cannot accommodate the largest conventions. Tourism and business leaders, along with the city of San Diego, are currently embroiled in a legal battle to confirm the age of Measure C, a 2020 initiative that sought to raise the hotel room tax to finance an enlarged center.
Even so, the overall ranking for “total space” was eight, elevating San Diego to the top 10 in the country in that category.
Chris Neumann, vice president of education for the American Society for Radiation Oncology, which is meeting in San Diego next week, said the group has no space concerns with the center, even with the “humongous” exhibit floor it assembles. That includes the massive radiation machines, known as linear accelerators, that are designed to aim radiation at cancer tumors.
“San Diego has plenty of space, and meeting rooms are not an issue,” said Neumann, whose job includes overseeing annual meetings. “At peak, we have 14 concurrent sessions and there is plenty of space for us.
“San Diego is our most popular of the places we go to, there has been no negative and people are generally happy. We were in Texas last year and some were not thrilled about that. From a planning standpoint, expenses have gone up a bit and that’s not exclusive to San Diego, but it is one of the more expensive cities we go to.”
Neumann, who expects about 9,200 to 9,600 to attend the four-day conference — just under the 10,000 attendees who came here in 2017 — gives the city high marks for its reliably good weather and closeness to the airport and says he likes the large number of windows at the center, which is important to the spending long days at the facility.
In compiling the scores for the individual centers, the Wall Street Journal explained that its methodology took into consideration a dozen factors related to the venue’s space, amenities and convenience, as well as the city and area where it is located. The space, amenities and convenience rating makes up 70 percent of the overall score, with the city and surroundings score making up the balance.
The latter addresses the density of dining spots and arts and entertainment venues relative to the local population of the area; walkability around the center, the average cost of a meal, and the number of “pleasant days” in the city in 2022, defined as the number of days where the average temperature was between 55 and 85 degrees and there was little rainfall.
Convention Center Corp. CEO Clifford “Rip” Rippetoe said that as much as San Diego could benefit from a more spacious convention center to attract larger, more lucrative meetings, the facility still works for some of the bigger conventions that need a certain amount of exhibit and meeting space.
“We don’t have a conversation with the shows that don’t fit,” he said. “We are No. 22 in size in the United States according to industry surveys, so ranking us as eighth in overall space shows the size we are works for quite a few of the national shows. Without knowing how they created their criteria, it’s not measurable for us to understand how we ranked eighth.
“We know we’re not the newest building or the largest but to be named No. 4 overall is a great takeaway for us. I could argue all day long why I think we’re No. 1 in every category. There is great demand for San Diego and we are constantly looking to the future to continue to find ways to add to the economic impact and to improve our community when we have great shows that come into San Diego.”
Earlier this year, San Diego earned a No. 3 ranking among the top 50 convention destinations in North America, an annual survey released by Cvent, which tracks thousands of cities throughout the U.S. to produce its list.
While it’s not entirely clear why San Diego got a lower ranking in the categories of restaurants and entertainment venues, Neumann said he may know why the city didn’t measure up in the latter category.
“I can relate to the arts and entertainment thing,” he said. “The main things you’d want to see or go to aren’t super convenient and are Uber rides away as opposed to walking, like the museums at Balboa Park and music and stadium venues, with the exception of Petco Park,” he said.
The latest ranking for the local convention center is good news for San Diego, which has seen a rapid rebound in booked conventions and numbers of attendees despite a pandemic that was expected to have a long-lasting impact on the meetings industry as attendees grew accustomed to remote and hybrid events.
But with the resounding return of leisure travel, conventioneers, too, are eager to return to convening with colleagues and on occasion combining vacations with their trade industry meetings.
Latest statistics from the Convention Center Corp. show that San Diego is gradually returning to pre-pandemic levels although it’s not there quite yet.
Spokesperson Maren Dougherty said Wednesday that the overall economic impact from citywide conventions could reach that milestone by later this year or in 2024. Some meeting organizers are telling the city that attendance is rivaling or exceeding that of pre-pandemic years.
For the 2023 fiscal year, there were an estimated 784,000 contracted hotel room nights in connection with conventions booked at the center, a figure that’s expected to rise to 961,000 for the current fiscal year, Dougherty said. That compares to the 822,528 hotel room nights generated in the 2019 fiscal year, she added.
While meeting and exhibit floor space is an issue for the much larger medical conventions, the American Thoracic Society, which has come to San Diego for many years, has found a way to adapt by using nearby convention hotels like the Marriott Marquis, Manchester Grand Hyatt and San Diego Bayfront Hilton.
Next year, when it will hold its annual convention in San Diego, it’s expecting 12,000 to 14,000 attendees, still shy of pre-pandemic attendance approaching 17,000, said Emily Catanzara, managing director of the group’s logistics department. Larger conventions like the Thoracic Society and the radiation oncologists typically rotate their meetings around the country.
She said she was surprised to learn that Las Vegas’ center garnered the top spot in the Wall Street Journal ranking.
“I’d put San Diego in front of Vegas for a couple of reasons,” she said. Yes, San Diego’s weather is great. We’re headquartered on the East Coast, and there’s nothing like that warm, wonderful breeze, but the second factor is absolutely the proximity to the airport, just steps away from where you need to be, and from a cost perspective, those Uber rides for our is a saving.
“As far as the meeting space and the layout and the city itself, I do think it’s best in the country, including the excellent labor force.”
San Diego is the only city in California that earned a top 10 ranking in the Wall Street Journal’s survey. Los Angeles came in at No. 21, San Francisco at 25 and Anaheim near the bottom at No. 28.
Los Angeles and San Francisco got especially low scores for overall space and meal prices but fared relatively well on weather and walkability. Anaheim scored poorly on hotel and food availability, as well as proximity to arts and entertainment venues.
While San Francisco in years past had long been a top-notch performer in the tourism and convention trade, its star standing declined dramatically as the pandemic waned, office workers fled downtown and homelessness grew. But more recently, visitation is improving, reports the San Francisco Travel Association.
Last month, it reported that demand for hotel rooms in San Francisco grew year-to-date by 15 percent and hotel revenue rose by 30 percent. Less glowing, however, are its stats for conventions. Next year, it acknowledges, will be challenging, with Moscone Center slated to host 21 events ing for 426,951 hotel room nights, down more than 30 percent from the nearly 665,000 room nights forecast this year. That compares to nearly 1 million room nights associated with conventions booked in the center in 2019.
Catanzaro said that San Francisco’s woes have not dissuaded her association from returning to the city for its annual convention.
“Our first full conference after the pandemic was in San Francisco in 2022, and I have to say, people were concerned about street conditions, but their mayor personally came to our headquarters in New York and outlined her plan for homeless and mental illness issues, and we realize it will take time to recover,” Catanzaro said.
“We had a great experience in 2022. Are there street conditions? Yes. But we only had one incident while there. You have to cities when they’re having a hard time. I don’t think the answer is to boycott.”
