SF tourism has experienced two years of straight growth for the first time since 2019, with an additional 500,000 tourists expected to visit the city in 2026 compared to 2025, but hotel occupancy rates are still much lower than pre-pandemic levels.

The San Francisco Travel Association released its annual summer travel forecast Wednesday, which projects that about 24.2 million travelers will visit SF this year compared to 23.7 million in 2025, as KTVU reports. The agency says tourism in SF has experienced two years of straight growth for the first time since 2019, and the influx of visitors is projected to bring in an additional $10 billion in revenue to the city.

The AI boom is largely credited with the boost in tourism, as half of this year’s 38 major conferences are tech-related, contributing to a 6% increase in hotel bookings over last year. The Chronicle notes that June alone is packed with tech conferences, including events organized by Snowflake, Databricks, and Microsoft AI.

Additionally, job numbers in SF’s leisure and hospitality sector saw more growth than any other job sector in 2025, accounting for 63,900 jobs and generating $655 million in tax revenue for the city’s General Fund. According to a statement from SF Mayor Daniel Lurie's office, this is equivalent to $778 in tax relief per San Francisco resident and represents a $50 million increase from 2024.

On the other hand, the World Cup did not bring in as many hotel bookings as anticipated, and the city’s current hotel occupancy rate — projected at 69% this year — is still far behind 2019’s rate of 82%, according to Anna Marie Presutti, CEO of the San Francisco Travel Association.

Leaders remain cautious about the estimates, as high fuel prices and the current political climate continue to impact travel. Per the Chronicle, the number of international visitors to the US as a whole reportedly fell by a record 5.5% last year. Travelers have said they canceled trips to the US out of fear of being detained by ICE.

“We plan the best we can, and we try not to be overly optimistic," said Anna Marie Presutti, CEO of the San Francisco Travel Association, speaking to KTVU. "We try to be true to what's going on, and I think those numbers reflect that.”

Nevertheless, the city expects to host around 2.3 million international travelers this year, up from 2.2 million last year, with the largest amount coming from Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, China, and India.

Related: Tourists Still Coming to San Francisco — But Not So Many From Abroad, Canada

Image: Ken Lund/Flickr

Mayor Lurie is set to visit two of San Francisco’s “sister cities,” Shanghai and Seoul, later this month as part of a tour promoting tourism through SF’s arts and culture, and he said there’s been talk of bringing pandas back to the SF Zoo.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said the goal of his visit to China and South Korea, which is his first international trip since becoming San Francisco’s mayor last year, is to expand cultural ties with the city’s sister cities and bring more tourism to SF, as KGO reports.

"We are leaning into our arts and culture. We have said it's driving our economic recovery. We want to go tell our great sister cities of Shanghai and Seoul all about San Francisco," Lurie said.

The trip departs April 17, and he’ll be traveling with other prominent local business and cultural leaders, including Soyoung Lee, the director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum.

"The whole mayor's team and all of us in the arts and culture in the city are deeply committed to continuing our roles in that cultural and economic exchange," Lee said, speaking to KGO.

KGO asked Lurie if he had plans to discuss bringing giant pandas back to the SF Zoo while he’s there.

"We are in dialogue about it,” Lurie told KGO. “We are making sure our zoo is ready to host those pandas. So we'll have more conversations about that."

As SFist previously reported, former Mayor London Breed had made it part of her 2024 campaign promise to bring back pandas for a visit to the SF Zoo, and after much effort, she secured funding for a $20 million panda habitat. Then Breed lost the election six days later, which was preceded by a scathing report a month prior from a city oversight commission, and Lurie's interest reportedly appeared lukewarm at the time.

Last May, SF Zoo CEO and Executive Director Tanya Peterson told the Recreation and Park Commission that the pandas were still in fact coming to the zoo, and they were expected to arrive by April.  

Previously: No Tariffs on Endangered Species': The SF Zoo Panda Plan Is Apparently Still On

Image: SF Zoo

Tourism to San Francisco hasn't totally tanked in the first seven months of Donald Trump's second term, despite his success in alienating and offending Canadians and international travelers broadly.

SF Travel has released some new numbers for 2025, showing that tourism to the city continues to increase since pandemic lows, even if we still have not reached the record numbers of tourists seen in 2019. And this is mostly thanks to domestic travelers.

And international tourists are still coming here, though SF Travel has documented a dip so far this year — with notable decreases in the numbers of travelers from Mexico and Canada. The agency projects that 2.26 million international travelers will have come to the city by year-end, down 3.2% from 2024. And the amount they'll have spent here is  forecasted to decline 2.7%, to $4.89 billion.

Visits from Canada, meanwhile, are down a whopping 15%, and there are 7.8% fewer tourists coming from Mexico, SF Travel says.

Overall tourism volume and spending are doing okay, however, with a modest rise of 1.3% expected, reaching 23.49 million — up from 23.2 million in 2024 — and tourist spending forecasted at $9.35 billion. This is thanks to a bump in domestic travelers that is off-setting the decrease in international travel.

Seven major concert nights this month and the end of last in Golden Gate Park have helped, with Grateful Dead fans flocking from across the country for the 60th anniversary Dead & Company shows. There will also be boosts felt in local hotels from the upcoming Laver Cup tennis tournament at the Chase Center in September, and the fall convention season.

Hotel occupancy is expected to hit 65.2% by year-end, with the Moscone Center hosting a total of 34 events in 2025 — producing around 657,000 hotel room nights, which represents a 64% increase over 2024.

The Super Bowl being played in Santa Clara early next year, and the upcoming World Cup games, are expected to bring a boost for 2026 as well, but only 30 events have been scheduled at the Moscone Center so far for 2026.

"Meetings and events have fueled San Francisco’s tourism industry this year, and that momentum is carrying into 2026," says SF Travel CEO Anna Marie Presutti, in a statement. "From music festivals and global sports to conventions at Moscone Center, San Francisco is in demand. We’re seeing steady growth that benefits hotels, restaurants, attractions, and neighborhoods across the city."

The reopening of the renovated Westin St. Francis and the upcoming openings of some Union Square stores — the fate of Macy's notwithstanding — as well as shows coming to town like the Tony-winning Stereophonic, which comes to the Curran in October, should provide a boost to the Union Square area as well.

We'll see what Trump can do to scare people out of San Francisco in the coming months — and he's very likely going to try! — but for all intents and purposes, like Mayor Daniel Lurie likes to say, SF seems to be "coming back."

Previously: International Tourism to California Is Taking a Beating Under the Trump Administration

Photo by Jared Lisack

Far fewer tourists from other countries are visiting California since Donald Trump took office again, and visits from Canada and Mexico are down particularly sharply, amidst immigration anxiety and tariff resentment.

As the Trump 2.0 term hits its “first 100 days” milestone, pollsters are inevitably wondering whether Americans feel better off than they did 100 days ago (Spoiler: They feel worse off!). The Chronicle uses the milestone to assess how California is in worse shape than it was 100 days ago, because of tariff chaos, wildfires and water issues, and enormous cuts in federal funding. And now KGO has a report that far fewer international tourists are visiting California in Trump’s first few months back in office, with particularly significant losses in visits from Canada and Mexico.

This is probably why we saw Gavin Newsom pleading with Canadian tourists to come to California a couple weeks back.  

The state tourism agency Visit California has the numbers, showing the declines in California tourism from other nations in the months of February and March. So it’s just a two-month sample size, but the drop is pretty significant. Canadian tourism to California is down 15.5% compared to those same two months in 2024, tourism from Mexico is down 24.2%, and UK tourism is down 22.1%.  

Yes, a couple countries had slight increases in tourists visiting California (China, Japan, India). But those small gains are nowhere near enough to offset the losses from Canada, Mexico, and the UK.

Bigger picture, though, we see that only 6% of California’s tourists are international tourists. But that’s misleading, as further down the same report, it’s noted that those 6% are responsible for an outsized 17% of all tourism spending in the state. But there’s just less of that spending happening, and it’s not all because of Trump.

"First you have the loonie [Canadian dollar] was at its weakest at the end of November, then you have the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, and then you have all this tension, the trade tariff tension," Toronto-based Flight Centre Travel Group spokesperson Amra Durakovic told KGO.

So international tourism is looking shaky this year, but there could be an even bigger problem looming for the state’s tourism industry. The May 7 Real ID deadline for boarding domestic flights is looming next week, and those requests for updated forms of ID have DMV offices backlogged.

Theoretically, those without a passport will no longer be able to get through airport security unless they have a Real ID, and will therefore be barred from flying even domestically.

We'll see how this pans out next week.  

Related: Gavin Newsom Woos Trump-Hating Canadians To Come Visit California in New Ad Campaign [SFist]

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - SEPTEMBER 12, 2018: An American flag flies at Pier 39, a shopping and restaurant center and tourist attraction in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images)

California Governor Gavin Newsom climbed atop the Golden Gate Bridge to tout the supposedly record-breaking $150 billion tourism dollars spent statewide in 2023, but cynics point out that may just be because of inflation-driven higher prices.

Yes, Governor Gavin Newsom is standing on top of one of the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge in the video below posted Sunday morning. “So I’m up here on the Golden Gate Bridge,” Newsom said from on high, with the scenery of Presidio and Sutro Tower visible behind him. “What a perfect place to announce our record-breaking tourism numbers. Last year, $150 billion of investment, tourists around the globe coming to the great state of California.”

Newsom is technically correct that the tourism agency Visit California had just announced that the state enjoyed a record $150.4 billion in travel spending for 2023, which does indeed break 2019’s pre-pandemic record year of  $144.9 billion. But those are statewide numbers, and KPIX points out that Bay Area tourism spending is still down compared to 2019 levels; with $37.7 billion in tourism spending here last year, whereas 2019’s total was $39 billion.

"We're just waiting for the tourists to come and for the season to really get going," Pier 23 Cafe owner Mac Leibert told KPIX Sunday. "And as you can see on a Sunday afternoon brunch, it's not happening."

KPIX also spoke to bus tour guides and pedicab drivers, who echoed the same sentiment. They sound a common note that the local convention and business conference markets have not rebounded, and the level of tourism from Chinese visitors is still at only about half the volume it was pre-pandemic. Prior to COVID, the Chinese tourist demographic was the No. 1 driver of SF tourism revenue.

And KTVU adds a little more skepticism to Newsom’s numbers, noting that the higher dollar amounts for 2023 may be solely because of inflation. “Things cost more last year than they did four years ago,” that station notes, and adds that the Visit California report “says that adjusting for inflation, travel spending in California is actually down 14% from its peak in 2019.”

There is one undisputed silver lining, though, in that the report also notes that 98% of the tourism- and hospitality-related jobs in the state have returned since the tourism job losses of recent years.

Related: SF Tourism Board Launches New Ad Campaign to Sell City as Still Quirky and Fun [SFist]

Image: @CAgovernor via Twitter

The National Black Nurses Association has just yanked their annual conference out of Florida and moved it to San Francisco, calling Florida “a hostile dangerous environment” for Black medical professionals.

Usually when you hear a story about professional conferences in San Francisco these days, it’s a story about the conferences leaving for another city. But SF represented itself pretty darned well with this year’s Dreamforce conference and last month’s APEC Summit, so maybe we’ve turned a corner.

And while it may be more for unrelated, external political reasons, Chronicle reports that SF has poached a major nurses’ conference from Florida, the 2024 National Black Nurses Association (NBNA) National Institute and Conference.

The NBNA had been scheduled to hold their six-day 2024 conference in Hollywood, Florida. But their members voted in October to move the conference out of Florida over the state’s legislators’ anti-diversity initiatives. And the Chron confirmed that they’ve chosen San Francisco as the site of their conference this coming summer.

In their October statement announcing they were ditching Florida, the NBNA said, “Our primary reason for this cancellation and move is our duty to ensure the safety and well-being of NBNA members, given the current political and social climate in Florida. The passage of anti-Black policies and laws, which have taken a destructive position to erase and silence Black history and restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools, together with the NAACP travel ban and the recent senseless, racially motivated, hate-fueled murders of three innocent Black Americans in Jacksonville, Florida has created a hostile, dangerous environment in the state.”

And now we know the conference is relocated to the Marriott Marquis at Fourth and Mission streets. That’s the hotel with the The View lounge, that 39th floor rooftop cocktail bar with unparalleled views of the city. (And it has underground ballrooms that connect to the Moscone Center.)

Neither the NBNA nor the Marriott Marquis would confirm to the Chronicle how many guests were expected to attend. But the NBNA website says the conference normally attracts “over 1,200 nurses and nursing students” and “over 100 exhibitors.”

The NBNA National Institute and Conference is now scheduled for July 23-28, 2024, right here in San Francisco.

Related: SF Loses Google Conference to Las Vegas, But Scores Big AI Conference From ChatGPT Company [SFist]

Image: Marriott

Google has reneged on its deal to hold the 2024 Google Cloud Next conference at Moscone Center, instead moving the event to Las Vegas, but SF did just score a big AI conference from ChatGPT producer OpenAI.

The San Francisco tourism and convention industry took a punch in the gut in July when the Red Hat Summit and Facebook/Meta's Business Group Summit both pulled out of San Francisco for their 2024 events. And Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently threatened to pull the granddaddy of them all, Dreamforce, out of San Francisco next year if street conditions were not to his liking. (Dreamforce 2023 is still starting next week at the Moscone Center.)

But more bad news for downtown hotels and restaurants came this week, as the Chronicle reports that Google has moved the 2024 Google Cloud Next conference out of Moscone Center. This particularly stings, because Google parent company Alphabet had already booked the Moscone Center for that 2024 conference, and has instead booked the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas for the event. Google Cloud Next had been in San Francisco for the pre-pandemic years of 2017, 2018 and 2019, and did return here in 2023.

The back-out apparently happened a couple months ago. “In early July, Google canceled its Moscone Center booking for the Google Cloud Next ’24 summit,” SF Travel spokesperson Lori Lincoln said in a statement to the Chronicle. “San Francisco Travel notified stakeholders and the hotel community at that time. The Google Cloud NEXT ’24 had been scheduled to be held at Moscone Center in February of next year.”

But on the flip side, San Francisco gained a highly anticipated AI conference on Wednesday. The current leading AI startup, ChatGPT creator OpenAI, announced they’re holding their first-ever developer conference in San Francisco OpenAI DevDay, on November 6, 2023 in San Francisco, according to TechCrunch.

“The one-day event will bring hundreds of developers from around the world together with the team at OpenAI to preview new tools and exchange ideas,” OpenAI said in their announcement. “In-person attendees will also be able to join breakout sessions led by members of OpenAI’s technical staff.”

As they noted, it’s only a one-day event. So it’s not the same financial tourism boost that the three-day Google Cloud Next event would have brought. But AI is currently a much brighter, shinier new object than Google Cloud services, so there’s likely to be more media attention to OpenAI’s first developer conference. And it’s a good bet that company’s tech-press darling CEO Sam Altman will deliver the keynote.

Though it’s unclear if OpenAI DevDay will be held at the Moscone Center. The company’s announcement thus far simply say the event will be “in San Francisco.” OpenAI says that “Registration to attend in person in San Francisco will open in a few weeks,” so the location may not be revealed until then.

Related: Marc Benioff Threatens to Move Dreamforce Conference Out of SF Over Homelessness, Drug Use [SFist]

Image: SFTravel

Trying to counter several years of bad national press and a concerted effort by conservatives to single out San Francisco for urban ills that exist in many cities, SF Travel has launched its "largest ever" ad campaign to lure conventioneers and tourists back to town.

Set to a new version of the song "San Francisco" made made famous by Judy Garland, the 60-second TV spot is getting rolled out now through October in specific markets where decision-makers and event planners reside, says SF Travel. That means New York, Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C., and Houston, with a companion digital campaign rolling out in international markets.

Speaking to the SF Business Times this week, Lynn Bruni-Perkins, SF Travel's chief marketing officer, calls the $6 million ad buy a "full funnel" campaign which is aimed at decision makers before they may even be planning a specific event.

"We want them to see everything the city has to offer — the bold, inviting, playfulness of San Francisco — and counteract the negative messaging they've been receiving through news media," Bruni-Perkins tells the Business Times.

You can see the spot below, which features shots of the Golden Gate Bridge and Ferry Building (obviously), the latter with a dance troupe outside, as well as people sipping cocktails in Moon Gate Lounge (upstairs from Mister Jiu's), tourists on cable cars, cars snaking down Lombard Street, and Lady Camden of Rupaul's Drag Race fame posing in front of the Castro Theatre.

Per the Business Times, the "Always in San Francisco" campaign is being funded in part "by Visit California — the state tourism body — and grants from the city's Office of Economic and Workforce Development, SF Travel, and industry stakeholders."

SF Travel was pretty doom-and-gloom about the city's convention situation even before the pandemic began. The president and CEO Joe D’Alessandro, you may recall, was lamenting the loss of Oracle's OpenWorld conference back in late 2019, and he had previously lamented the loss of a major medical-industry conference in 2018 in which organizers specifically cited the homelessness issue.

"There was a time when the biggest obstacle to having a convention here was that it can be expensive, but now we have this new factor," D’Alessandro said at the time.

It may still be years before downtown hotels see the kind of occupancy rates they had before the pandemic. Per the Business Times, 35 events at the Moscone Center are set to account for 700,000 room-nights this year, nearly double the number from 2022 — when hotel occupancy citywide was around 62%.

That level of occupancy is similar to what SF saw back around the dot-com bust in 2001 — as the Chronicle reported at the height of local hotel occupancy in 2015, the city had the highest occupancy rate anywhere in the country at that point, hovering around 84%, with hotels also charging some of the highest average room rates.

Local tourism industry officials are crowing over the most lucrative week they’ve had in a couple years, and while every weekend won’t have this many events, there is optimism for a booming holiday season.

Admittedly, in a normal year, the 2022 Dreamforce conference drawing 40,000 attendees would be considered a down year for a trade show that normally draws 150,000. But will there ever be a “normal year” again? Downtown businesses were happy to see those corporate expense accounts return, even if in smaller numbers than many a previous Dreamforce. And the conference was followed up by an “Everything’s happening this weekend” weekend of Folsom Street Fair, Portola Music Festival, and more.

This harmonic convergence of events did beget the giant influx of tourism dollars that the local hospitality industry had hoped for, according to KRON4. We don’t have a ton of hard numbers yet, but at least two huge hotels, the Park 55 and Hilton were reportedly fully booked over the weekend, and the lately beleaguered hospitality scene feels they did very well for themselves last week.  

“That was a good shot in the arm for us and it’s not just the concert promoters or event producers, it’s all the other jobs that come along with it,” SF Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Rodney Fong told KRON4. “Whether they’re florists, or linen companies, or rental equipment companies.”

Obviously, fancy downtown spots enjoyed the spoils of Dreamforce returning. “We actually had a lot of restaurant buyouts at Epic [Steak restaurant] early in the week where the Salesforce group just took over the whole place,” Pete Sittnick, managing partner of Water Bar and Epic Steak told KRON4.

Of course, weeks packed with so many events are not a regular occurrence. But let’s zoom out and look at the bigger picture. The chart above only shows hotel occupancy rates, it’s only  updated through July 2022, and again, we don’t have numbers from the past seven days. But you see that those hotel occupancy rates are creeping back up into the 70% range, from a pre-pandemic normal of an 80% range.

And there should be more good weekends on the near-term horizon. This coming weekend you have the Castro Street Fair and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, which may not pack hotels, but certainly get locals spending hospitality dollars. The following week is Fleet Week, which very likely will pack hotels and draw the tourist element.

Beyond that, Epic Steak’s Sittnick adds that he’s “Looking forward to a holiday season this year that we think is going to be quite busy.” That could be shaping up!

The wild card is whether we have another COVID-19 surge, and there are signs in the U.K. that may looming. And COVID waves do have a way of blowing through PR campaigns to force people back downtown like they were tissue paper.

Related: Gigantic Weekend of Events Is Upon Us, With Street Closures Galore [SFist]

Image: ​​@Benioff via Twitter

It's been at least three years of a steady stream of national headlines about San Francisco being in a state of chaos, or a state of general misery, and being a wildly expensive and filthy city that people can't wait to escape from. But suddenly, some editors on high have decided San Francisco is OK again, and still very pretty, and maybe it has something to do with the Presidio Tunnel Tops opening? Is the pendulum finally swinging back to where people are jealous of San Franciscans again?

Time Magazine recently saw fit to include San Francisco in its "World's Greatest Places" list — something that seems almost unthinkable a year or two ago.

"San Francisco’s incredible scenery, cultural institutions, and diverse culinary offerings are all making major strides this year," the magazine writes. "Overnight visitors have a wide selection of new hotels to choose from" too, they say — pointing to the new 1 Hotel on the Embarcadero and the still-not-actually-open LINE SF.

Time also calls out the upcoming Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco — which opens October 1 — and the just opened Presidio Tunnel Tops park as new draws for tourists.

And, yes, as opposed to last summer, most of the city's noteworthy restaurants are back up and rolling at full capacity, so there's that too.

Smithsonian Magazine has a glowing piece about the Presidio Tunnel Tops this week too, listing it among other "infrastructure reuse projects that have completely reshaped North American cities in recent years."

The New York Times turned to local writer Lauren Sloss for a piece headlined "San Francisco Shines With New Museums, Restaurants and Parks" this week, which also calls out the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Tunnel Tops, but goes a bit deeper noting things like Francisco Park in Russian Hill, the opening of Shuggie's Trash Pie & Natural Wine and other hot natural wine spots like Bar Part Time, as well as the awesome outdoor spaces now available at Nopa and Casements.

I guess a few new parks, restaurants, and a new museum are enough to wipe away the hangover of Trump and Fox News trash-talking us for four years, and two years of a pandemic that brought a hundred headlines about the "mass exodus" of SF residents. Was it all Chesa Boudin's fault?!

Remember when the New York Times' own SF bureau chief lamented about his fatigue at covering wildfires for three of his first four years on the job? And that was in August 2020! There is and was much more to come.

And remember, long before the pandemic began, in May 2019, when the New Yorker published a piece by a writer living here who talked about how everyone she knew was "down on San Francisco these days" and couldn't "envision a future here."

Even just a few short weeks ago, former SF resident Nellie Bowles filed her contribution to the genre of think-pieces known as "why I had to leave San Francisco and why it really sucks there now." Calling her hometown a "failed city," Bowles' piece was pegged to the recall of Chesa Boudin and repeated a bunch of oft-repeated falsehoods — including the idea that SF is a special magnet for the homeless because our services for the homeless are so generous.

As Sloss intones, despite all the negative press, "San Francisco is still San Francisco. The fog still rolls in from the Pacific to blanket the city’s jumbled hills, the sunset still flames crimson behind the Golden Gate Bridge and the smell of salt and eucalyptus still hits the moment you step outside of San Francisco International Airport."

And hey everybody out there having a gross heatwave right now! We're sitting pretty over here with our new parks and stuff and 65-degree afternoons.

But, if you listen to this guy, the place is still going to hell, and the streets are nothing but "fentanyl addicts jerking off in the streets and just throwing feces," so, believe who you will.

Photo via SF Dept. of Public Health/Twitter

A double-decker tour bus went up in flames Wednesday night, apparently while traveling south on 101 out of the city, and when CHP arrived on the scene the driver was nowhere to be found.

The fire was reported near the Grand Avenue exit in South San Francisco around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. As KRON4 reports, the incident caused a serious traffic backup on southbound 101, first as flames were being extinguished, and then as two of the four lanes of the freeway were blocked.

Northbound lanes were also temporarily blocked by a CHP vehicle while the smoke was still heavy across the roadway.

No one was injured in the fire, and the bus had no passengers at the time, but CHP was curious as to why the driver did not remain at the scene until someone arrived.

As KTVU reports, the owner of the tour bus company, Maneet Sohal, says the driver was "completely safe" and had just decided to walk back to the tow yard about a half mile away.

The cause of the fire remains unclear.

This was one of the big, red, double-decker buses that are often seen around San Francisco and are banned in some neighborhoods like Alamo Square as a nuisance, with the "Hop on Hop Off" logo on the side. The bus was part of San Francisco Deluxe Sightseeing Tours.

A video from the Citizen app shows the bus in flames, and the large traffic backup forming.

An estimated 10,000 or more video game nerds  — including the Wordle guy — have converged upon Moscone Center for the return of the annual Game Developers Conference, though the event is projected to have only about half of its normal attendance.

When the scaled-down Dreamforce conference returned to the Moscone Center five months ago (seemingly with more paid staff than in-person attendees), it was not actually the first Moscone Center conference of the pandemic. That distinction went to the California Dental Associations Annual Conference, which happened there right after Labor Day 2021. But it is still healing to see the Moscone Center be a conference venue again, instead of the stunningly inadequate homeless shelter, or the mass vaccination site it was once the vaccines arrived.

And check out the scene above, as the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) returned Monday, and remains in town until Thursday. The long lines are presumably because they’re checking vaccination status pretty strictly.

Given the images we’re seeing on the official GDC Flickr account, this does not seem at all crowded for a major event at the Moscone Center. Yes, these images are from the event’s hired, paid photographers, so they may not accurately reflect the actual safety compliance (or diversity) of the event. And Monday and Tuesday are sort of warm-up “Summit” days, whereas the heavy hitter keynote speakers are scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, like Wordle creator Josh Wardle.

So Wednesday and Thursday might be more accurate reflections, but to the untrained eye, this seems like a safe and repsonsible event.

“We are enforcing strict vaccine and mask mandates, which include booster shots for all those who are eligible to receive them,” GDC says of their COVID protocols. “The Moscone Center has enacted additional regulations, incorporating enhanced cleaning protocols, advanced air filtration, and an abundance of hand sanitizing stations available for all to use in their event space.

And of course it is a far smaller GDC than normal, even though games and gaming consoles boomed in popularity during the past two years. “Attendance numbers weren’t available Monday, but visitors booked over 12,000 hotel rooms,” according to the Chronicle. “Attendance is expected to be around 50% to 60% of pre-pandemic levels, which peaked at 29,000 people in 2019, said Katie Stern, vice president of media and entertainment markets at Informa, the organizer of the event. “ (That’s her above.)

And San Francisco could use the reputational upgrade that comes with people actually visiting here, rather than just watching an onslaught of partisan media coverage targeting the city during these years of shut-in COVID isolation. (The gaming industry has also suffered reputational damage during this period.) And even if clubs and venues are short-staffed, the city has to welcome those sweet tourist dollars.

And dollars are certainly required for this event. An Expo floor pass alone is $349, and an All Access pass costs $2,199.  

Related: Video: Fantastic Post-It Mural Welcomes Game Developers Conference [SFist]

Top Image: @Official_GDC via Twitter

San Francisco Mayor London Breed and officials from San Francisco International Airport and the San Francisco Travel Association are headed out on a 10-day tour of the Continent in an effort to combat negative press about SF becoming a hellhole.

"Europe is a real opportunity for us,” said mayoral spokesperson Jeff Cretan about the trip. “We need to get out there."

The PR tour, or whatever you want to call it, is being paid for by SFO, as the Chronicle reports — which, yes, is funded by the city but has a budget that is separate from other city departments. SF Travel, which also recently arranged a domestic PR tour for the mayor, will also be tagging along.

On the agenda are meetings with other mayors, like Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, as well as various public officials and executives at Heathrow, Gatwick, and Brussels International airports. The stops on the tour are London, Brussels, Frankfurt, and Paris, and as Cretan tells the Chronicle, the focus will be on meeting with European airlines to potentially attract more direct flights to San Francisco. Air France, British Airways, Air Belgium, Lufthansa, and Virgin Atlantic are all on the schedule.

Also, Breed will be doing media interviews in London, Frankfurt, and Paris. And she's likely to get questioned about videos that have gone viral globally of crimes occurring in broad daylight in SF — though presumably Europeans aren't quite so obsessed with our Walgreens petty theft problem as Fox News is.

The city and SFO are apparently concerned about the slow recovery of flights from Asia, where continued restrictions on travel to the U.S. due to the pandemic are keeping many tourists and businesspeople away. In pre-pandemic times, Asia flights made up a bulk of SFO's international business.

One main revenue weakness noted in a recent budget analyst's report for the city was tourism.

"The city’s tourism and hospitality sector is projected to rebound in FY 2021-22 and FY 2022-23, but at a slower pace than budgeted given more recent travel and hospitality trends," the report said.

According to SFO data, the number of "deplanements" from international flights coming from Europe was up 550% in December 2021 compared to a year earlier, but still up only 15% overall for the year. Of course, both the Delta and Omicron waves of the pandemic greatly impacted the expected travel recovery of 2021, but officials seem intent on speeding things up with European carriers.

Comparatively, the number of passengers deplaning from Asia in 2021 was down 22% compared to 2020, even though flights out of Asia largely stopped for several months in 2020.

Photo: Anthony Delanoix

Despite reams of articles declaring the death of San Francisco amid sky-high rents, economic inequality, homelessness and open-air drug use, the city's tourism numbers were actually up in 2019.

Frequent doomsayer about the general state of the city Joe D'Alessandro, the president and CEO of the San Francisco Travel Association, now says the numbers are in and, in fact, lots of tourists and conventioneers kept coming to San Francisco last year, even more than in 2018. 26.2 million people came to the city in 2019, up from 25.8 million in 2018, according to SF Travel's count. And this means that SF has broken its own tourism record for the tenth consecutive year.

Those tourists spent $10.2 billion here, to boot.

But things aren't all rosy looking ahead, as D'Alessandro cautions.

"Overall, 2019 was another great year," he says, quickly adding, "Internationally, the evolving coronavirus situation and other market conditions make 2020 a difficult year to project." Notably, the relocation of Oracle's OpenWorld conference to Las Vegas, announced in December, is likely to impact the 2020 numbers.

In his report, D'Alessandro said that hotel occupancy was up 0.8%, and hotel room nights connected to the Moscone Center hit 1 million. "This is only the second year this has ever happened, 2014 being the first," he says. And according to SF Travel's Visitor Study, the average visitor to SF spent $365 per day last year, while the average convention attendee spent $584 per day.

In announcing its decision to move OpenWorld, Oracle cited SF's "poor street conditions" and the high cost of hotel rooms, which were both complaints of conventioneers.

Back in 2018, D'Alessandro was foretelling future doom for the city after a "major medical association" decided to move its annual conference out of SF, effective in 2023. So perhaps we just aren't seeing the effects of the "street conditions" problem yet — although lots of tourists keep finding reasons to come here outside of professional conventions.

The long and the short of it is, maybe everyone will stop traveling for months because of the coronavirus, but probably not, and hopefully San Francisco doesn't become a nexus of the disease, and we'll break the tourism record number again in 2020.

Related: Depressed-Sounding New Yorker Writer Describes Bleak, Dystopian San Francisco