San Francisco, a longtime first-tier conventions darling, fell on hard times starting with the pandemic and continuing through a rough recovery process that has seen many major downtown players, most notably in the tech sector, head for the exits.
But the city hopes to ride some recent tailwinds to bring business, and conventions, back to downtown and the convention district, anchored by Moscone Center.
[Related: Why San Francisco Is the OG Sustainable Destination]
With new Mayor Daniel Lurie championing the importance of conventions—personally addressing the 8,000-attendee JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in January and the 30,000-strong mid-March Game Developers Conference, as well as announcing new bookings in public addresses—many are optimistic that happy days will be here again soon.
The fall 2024 decision by Salesforce’s Dreamforce—which attracts more than 40,000 delegates and is perhaps the key barometer of the city’s conventions health—to recommit for the next three years certainly filled a lot of civic sails with wind.
[Related: Dreamforce Defies 'Doom Loop' by Re-Upping San Francisco Show]
Meetings Today caught up with new San Francisco Travel President and CEO Anna Marie Presutti in mid-March to discover the latest wins and ongoing challenges impacting the city’s meetings and conventions industry, and also her objectives to lure future business since taking over the top spot last October.
A more than 20-year San Francisco hotel sales veteran, and the first female San Francisco CVB chief in its 115-year history, Presutti may just be the right woman for the job of bringing San Francisco back.
Tyler Davidson: How has your hotel experience, specifically more than 20 years in San Francisco, helped in your new role?
Anna Marie Presutti: I think that’s resonated very well, particularly with the ownership groups and certainly the hotel community and the restaurant community—I’m speaking that language and have lived through the pain.
Tyler Davidson: Mayor Lurie seems very involved in promoting San Francisco’s convention industry, even making public announcements when major shows are signed. Is it refreshing to feel that support in City Hall?
Anna Marie Presutti: This is a mayor that is very savvy when it comes to ‘follow the money.’ Obviously, he’s made an incredible career, and the money for the general fund comes from the hotel tax. So, if I’m a guy who’s running a city, I want to know where my funding mechanisms are, and when I realize it’s coming from the hotel tax, I want occupancies to be high, I want rates to be reasonably high.
So, yes, I think he genuinely understands the economic impact that these conventions and citywide programs, specifically, do for the city and how that, in turn, fuels the City Hall engine.
[Related: Will AI Save San Francisco From the 'Doom Loop?']
Tyler Davidson: So, he gets it. He’s the chief salesperson of the city?
Anna Marie Presutti: I told him I was setting some sales goals for another program and he said, ‘Hey, I just heard about this program.’ And I said, you know, Mayor, anytime somebody talks to me about business as much as you do, they have sales goals—maybe there’s something in that for you? But he does. He is 100% invested.
Tyler Davidson: What positive developments are lifting your spirits?
Anna Marie Presutti: I think one of the biggest things is, we came out of the JP Morgan conference and rolled right into the NBA All-Star game. What an event like that does is put so many eyeballs on our city—the aerial shots alone get people to long to be here. We even got Charles Barkley on our side…Listen, that’s advertising we can’t buy, whether you’re a basketball fan or not.
Tyler Davidson: Some DMO people have mentioned to me that even though San Francisco may be a first-tier competitor, they want to see it perform well because they see it as a barometer for the health of the industry in some respects. Is that true?
Anna Marie Presutti: Every time I’m at a conference and I talk to our competitors…I have a friend in Las Vegas, and he has a very prominent role in the Las Vegas area, and he said, ‘You know, Anne Marie, seven years ago, five years ago, there were three cities that we could not pull business out of to get to Vegas: San Francisco, San Francisco and San Francisco. ‘And now,’ he says—not now, but a few years ago—‘there was one city that was just like taking candy from a baby,’ you know? ‘But what we realize is we have to have San Francisco on the map. We need healthy competition. It’s what helps the industry go.’ Not that he said, ‘Here, take these conventions back.’ But he did say it’s not good when you have a major market not performing the way it’s supposed to be.
Remember, we were the benchmark for so long, where everybody aspired to be, and when the benchmark is lower, that’s not good for anyone.
[Related: Taking Off: The San Francisco Peninsula Is One of California's Best-Kept Secrets]
Tyler Davidson: What are some of your goals now that you’ve had a few months to get the wind at your back?
Anna Marie Presutti: Long term, I really want to see that convention calendar be incredibly robust and get us back to between 750,000 and 800,000 citywide room nights. I think once we get to that space, we’ll feel healthy again. It’ll be good for small business. It’s good for retail. It’s good for a lot of the restaurants, of course—all sides when we have those programs in town. That’s a long-term goal that needs to happen in the short term.
I’m really working with my salespeople, doing a lot of sales calls. I’m sitting in front of those customers, asking them for the business and trying to overcome any objections that they may have. So, it’s sort of a long-term goal that I hope to be short term. And then the short-term goal is really just trying to navigate all of this craziness that’s happening in the world and making sure that we’re putting our money in the right direction; pointing our guns in the right direction so that we’re not just shooting at air.
We need to market internationally. Should we go to certain markets? Do we get into Mexico and Canada right now? Yeah, pump the brakes there. But India, we definitely need to. They’re performing quite well, so we need to get into India and take more of that market share than we already have. Being really strategic about where we’re spending our dollars, how we’re spending our marketing dollars, and making sure that there’s ROI in what we’re doing.
Tyler Davidson: Have tariffs—or at least threats of tariffs—against Canada and Mexico impacted business traveling to San Francisco from those two countries?
Anna Marie Presutti: Gosh, [Canada’s] a massive market for us, and Mexico is, too. I’m surprised by how much business we get from both Canada and Mexico.
The good news, on the Canadian front, is they have not canceled any of their airlift into San Francisco, and they have into other markets. Listen, we could hang up and that could all change in the next 10 minutes, I don’t know. But for right now, it’s just a sentiment overall that, as a San Franciscan and Californians in general, that we sort of are in a bubble.
I think the general public kind of knows that this is big. You’ve just got to wonder, how resilient will we be to that? I don’t know. So, it’s a little volatile right now. It’s going to cause me to lose a little bit of sleep.
[Related: 8 Hottest Offsite Events Options in San Francisco’s Mission Bay]
Tyler Davidson: If you were talking to a meeting planner who hasn’t been to San Francisco for a while, or was concerned during the last five years, what would you tell them about the city to convince them that they should consider coming back?
Anna Marie Presutti: I think it’s really easy for me to talk about what positive changes have taken place here in the city, but it’s easier for me to show you we have great programs in place that if you’re a meeting planner, I will fly you [here] and one of your other planners. We’ve partnered with United Airlines and they provide two free roundtrip tickets to come to San Francisco so that they can actually see it for themselves. And I think you know seeing is believing, more often than not.
In the last year, we’ve heard people say, ‘This is nothing like what I saw on the news. This is nothing like what they’re sharing.’ So, now we’re dealing with a perception issue more than we’re dealing with a real issue. Now, that’s not to say that everything is perfect out there, but the reality is, it’s shown incredible improvement.
I think now we’re way in front of so many other cities who are experiencing what we were experiencing three years ago. They’re in the thick of it now. They’re dealing with what we were dealing with three years ago, and we’re coming out of it.
We can confidently take people around this beautiful city, show them everything that we have to offer, and show them how we have made some of the amazing improvements that we’ve made. Rather than me talking about it, I’d rather show them.
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