2019 promises to be a blockbuster year for Anaheim’s tourism industry. And while next summer’s opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is far, far away the biggest reason, it’s not the only one.
The Anaheim Convention Center’s “big show” events—mega-events that book part or all of the convention center and at least 1,000 hotel rooms from the area’s largest hotels at peak time—are projected to bring in 912,000 attendees next year.
That figure will be up about 31% year-over-year, according to data from destination marketer Visit Anaheim, which promotes the area for travel and tourism.
Visit Anaheim also expects the number of big shows in the city to total 54 next year, a 26% jump from the 43 events held at the convention center this year.
Along with big shows, Anaheim also hosts “meetings”—events that translate into fewer than 1,000 rooms at peak and aren’t necessarily in the convention center.
Meetings will generate an additional 460 events, 600,000 attendees and 313,000 hotel room nights this year.
Strategy Shift
Visit Anaheim, the convention center, and the area’s biggest hotels a few years ago began to push for larger and more profitable shows that fill hotel rooms with the biggest bookings first.
Over the last four years, the smaller meetings have declined 14% to 45% in events, rooms, and attendees.
In the same period, bigger convention gatherings are up 32% in events, 15% in rooms, and 47% in attendees.
Larger events have included two from Allergan PLC and one of religious group Kenneth Copeland Ministries.
All told, the convention center will see about 1.5 million attendees in 2019, up 17% from 2018.
A large portion of next year’s total attendance figure will continue to be filled by the biggest of the big shows.
National Association of Music Merchants, or NAMM, and Natural Products Expo West have taken place in Anaheim since the Reagan administration, and combined bring in 200,000 visitors each spring to Orange County. Both NAMM and Natural Products recently recommitted into the early 2020s.
Busy, Big
The increase in big shows come at a big time for the city’s hospitality and leisure sectors, according to Visit Anaheim President and Chief Executive Jay Burress.
“There’s been a significant amount of investment to reimagine the destination for leisure and business travelers,” he said in an email. “The best way to show and promote that transformation to a large audience is to bring people here to experience those changes firsthand … to drive positive economic impact.”
The city is promoting what it estimates to be $4 billion in leisure and hospitality investments to the immediate area the past few years.
It’s easy to see where that money is going. The area in and around the city’s 1,100-acre Anaheim Resort includes Orange County’s biggest collection of construction cranes and project sites, primarily for hotel development.
About 7,600 new hotel rooms are planned or under construction in and around the Anaheim Resort district and in neighbor Garden Grove.
Disneyland Resort’s long-awaited attraction Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opens next year as the most expensive project going up in the area, part of an estimated $1 billion investment by Disney.
The convention center also got its fair share of upgrades with a recent 200,000-square-foot expansion, bringing its capacity to just over 1 million square feet, the largest such campus on the West Coast.
Hosts Most
The Hilton Anaheim and Anaheim Marriott are among the area hotels likely to benefit the most from the boost in big show-related “room blocks.”
Such blocks will rise 8% to 562,000 next year, Visit Anaheim said.
That’s one reason big shows are the most coveted in the convention and trade show industry, bringing crowds of people at once, plenty of presold hotel rooms, and free-spending guests.
In the past three years, the convention center has averaged 700,000 in attendance and 534,000 room nights per year from hotel blocks.
The number of estimated room nights is usually lower than total bookings because it excludes attendees who don’t use blocks.
About “30% to 50% of attendees stay outside the block” because of brand loyalty, corporate travel programs, or buying through online travel sites, among other factors, said Visit Anaheim Senior Vice President of Sales & Services Junior Tauvaa.
The projected increase in room usage comes amid a strong market for local hoteliers.
Revenue per available room for the first nine months of this year was up 5.8% to $164 year-over-year, according to the latest data for Anaheim from CBRE Hotels in Los Angeles.
Big Fish
The city, hotels and Visit Anaheim are increasingly focused on the big fish, groups that decide where trade shows should hold events, Tauvaa said (see related story, this page).
“We handpick these because they bring the big ones,” he said.
When Burress joined Visit Anaheim as chief executive in 2013, it began targeting shows of shows in earnest.
To riff on an old BASF commercial: Those events aren’t the big shows—they’re shows that deliver the big shows.
They’re conferences and confabs, not for specific groups, such as rock-and-rollers or organic products sellers, but for gatherings of many groups, all at some level researching where to meet next.
Through one, the Experient/EnVision event for national associations and companies, Visit Anaheim booked at least 28 conventions in the past two years with 860,000 rooms blocked for clients in education, technology and pharmaceuticals extending over the next several years.
Visit Anaheim’s efforts include sponsoring, exhibiting at and attending shows, as well as bringing them to the convention center to showcase the city—sometimes on Visit Anaheim’s dime.
“We went to [our] board and said we need to host events,” Burress told the Business Journal. “There’s a financial commitment to that.”
Visit Anaheim reported $18 million in revenue in the year ended June 2017, generated largely from tourism-improvement districts covering Anaheim and Garden Grove that charge hotel bed taxes. Its annual expenses were $16.2 million. The figures were up from $16.2 million and $14.2 million in 2016, respectively.
