Convention tendency: bigger is better

If you look around at the North American meetings market, there’s a clear trend: expansions. The major reason: to seek bigger business and more of it.
 

“Right now we are turning away a substantial amount of business because we don’t have the space available to attract bigger business and more of it,” Steven Johnson, vp of public affairs for the San Diego CVB, told MeetingsFocus Mid-America.
 

The San Diego CVB is adding another 225,000 square feet of exhibit space, and 100,000 square feet of meeting rooms. That’s due to be complete in 2015.
 

The city of Philadelphia last month unveiled another US$786 expansion at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
 

The facility is going from one million to 2.2 million square feet, said CVB officials.
 

There are also plans in Miami, still not thrashed out, to add space there.
 

The expansion of the Indianapolis Convention Center earlier this year that doubled its previous space and made it the 16th largest center in the US. The expansion was an immediate success.
 

The reaction has been “fantastic,” said Michelle Travis, vp of sales.
 

Could that mean some overbuilding with emerging large centers sharpening their prices to fill the new centers?
In San Diego, tourism officials say their outlook remains “one of cautious optimism as signs of economic recovery continue.” They expect any expansion to attract new business. San Diego has particularly targeted the always-strong medical meeting market.
 

“And even though it is bigger, the Convention Center still faces intense competition. More than 17 million square feet of new exhibit space have been added nationwide in the last decade, even as the industry of hosting conventions is redefining itself,” writes the Philadelphia Inquirer.
 

To those in the business, more space does not secure a profitable future for convention centers.
 

"Just building a building that is large enough to house exhibitions, or making one bigger building from one that already exists, does not guarantee any level of success," said Steven Hacker, president of the International Association of Exhibitions & Events, a trade association whose members include 1,500 exhibition organizations.
 

It is a buyers’ market, he said, and "the competition has never been more fierce."
 

The city’s convention officials say they are confident about the future.

“They note that Philadelphia has already established itself as an attractive host city because of all it has to offer beyond the doors of the Convention Center. The publicly financed expansion, they argue, will make the city an even more attractive alternative when courting conventions, big and small,” writes the Inquirer.
 

By David Wilkening