San Fran is collapsing. Now a major tech conference will not happen in San Fran. This will cost millions in hotel and restaurant revenues and the government lots in lost taxes.
“One of San Francisco’s largest annual conferences put on by Palo Alto software maker VMware will not take place at the city’s Moscone Center, the company said Thursday. The decision is a blow to the city’s downtown corridor, which has struggled to recover foot traffic and the regain the pre-pandemic economic momentum brought by large tech conferences.
Instead it will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada. This is a Free State that has little crime or homeless problems, human feces are not on the streets, cars are allowed and welcomed into town and taxes are low. The cost will probably be significantly less in Nevada than the high cost San Fran.
Another tech conference will be fleeing San Francisco in 2023
Story by By Chase DiFeliciantonio, SF Chronicle, 12/22/23
One of San Francisco’s largest annual conferences put on by Palo Alto software maker VMware will not take place at the city’s Moscone Center, the company said Thursday. The decision is a blow to the city’s downtown corridor, which has struggled to recover foot traffic and the regain the pre-pandemic economic momentum brought by large tech conferences.
“VMware is planning to host VMware Explore 2022 at a different location and has discontinued its current contract with San Francisco’s Moscone Center,” a VMware spokesperson said in an email to The Chronicle. They added it was “a decision that makes financial sense both for the company and our customers in today’s economic environment.”
The company did not address questions about why it was making the change, where the new conference would be held and if San Francisco would be a potential future location for the conference. The VMware events focus on cloud computing issues.
The Moscone Center could not immediately be reached for comment.
“We are disappointed they moved the conference, which they’ve also done in years past,” Lori Lincoln, vice president of media relations at the San Francisco Travel Association said in an emailed statement. “We would welcome VMWare back to San Francisco in the future. In the meantime, we are focused on bringing new convention and event business to San Francisco.”
The San Francisco Business Times, which first reported the news, said the annual conference will move to Las Vegas going forward.
The event has been held in one of the two cities on an alternating basis for years, and was held in person for the first time this year, in San Francisco, since 2019 after two years of being held online.
While conferences, including San Francisco’s marquee tech gathering Dreamforce, put on by Salesforce, have been coming back to downtown and the Moscone Center since the depths of the pandemic, the VMware announcement means San Francisco’s core will see fewer rooms booked and less business for downtown restaurants during the late summer period when the conference was expected to happen.
San Francisco is coming off a strong 2022 summer travel season, with daily hotel occupancy rates reaching 80% in June.
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