To attract convention business, do you need to spend money to make money?

In recent years, even destination cities have had to offer significant incentives, discounts and free rent in order to lure convention and trade show business.

In 1996, the nation’s four largest convention centers — McCormick Place in Chicago, Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, the Las Vegas Convention Center and Atlanta’s Georgia World Congress Center — combined to accommodate 3.83 million convention attendees, according to data from Heywood Sanders, who studies convention centers.

That annual figure peaked at 4.74 million in 2006 before the Great Recession. In 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, just 3.84 million people attended conventions at the nation’s four premier venues.

Wichita isn’t competing with Atlanta and Las Vegas for convention and trade show business, but the same story of exhibit hall expansion and waning attendance has played out closer to home, too.

The Overland Park Convention Center opened in 2002 with consultants estimating the new facility and city-owned hotel would generate 60,000 overnight stays a year.

Overnight stays peaked at roughly 58,000 in 2006. By 2015, that figure had dipped to 30,346 stays. In 2018, the last pre-pandemic year with available data, just 23,338 convention-goers stayed overnight in Overland Park.

Despite the drop-off in attendance in the past decade, cities keep building new convention centers. The $288 million publicly funded Oklahoma City Convention Center opened in January 2021.

“A study now is just forecasting what might happen two or three or more years from now,” said Heywood Sanders, a public administration professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio who studies convention centers.

“Things remain very uncertain in the world of travel and hospitality at this point. So, one might reasonably ask the question, ‘What’s the cost in waiting a bit?’ What’s the cost in waiting to see, putting it off for a year or two and seeing how things look at the new convention center and hotel in Oklahoma City, looking to see how the Overland Park convention center performs.”

Sanders said the convention center industry never fully rebounded from the Great Recession, despite the push in cities around the country to continue expanding convention center space.

“Prior to the pandemic, that is through 2019, the overall convention and trade show industry in this country was characterized by a buyer’s market,” Sanders said. “That’s a term that’s used by the counterpart organization of Visit Wichita in Denver, in Washington D.C., in a host of other cities. Highly competitive, in the judgment of some, overbuilt with convention center space.”

Riley Gutierrez McDermid

The Kansas City Star

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