‘Not like what they heard on the news’

The three-day conference pulled 40,000 out-of-city visitors to the Moscone Center between September 12–14, recalling recent memories of a vigorous downtown. A hotel manager told SFGATE that certain guests even defended San Francisco from its skewered reputation seen in national coverage.

New data viewed by SFGATE indicates just how prosperous the event was for the San Francisco tourism industry.

The real estate analytics provider CoStar Group prepared hotel occupancy rates for the area around the conference including 106 hotels and 19,776 rooms. The report revealed a 93.6% average hotel occupancy rate during the conference’s peak evenings from Sept. 11 through Sept. 13. 

“It was nice to see the olden days,” Jon Handlery of Handlery Hotel in Union Square told SFGATE. “The city was alive. The restaurants were jammed. I could see people waiting to get into Macy’s. This is who San Francisco is.”

Across the San Francisco and San Mateo markets, CoStar saw the largest year-over-year increases in average daily rates and revenue generated per available room.

Nearly every room at the Marriott Hotels near the Moscone Center was booked out, said its general manager Clifton Clark. “We ran similar occupancy at this hotel last year but there was more demand on the market and the rates were better,” Clark said. “I talked to guests from Miami and Chicago, they were all positive about the show and were looking forward to coming back next year. I didn’t hear any negativity — they said it’s not like what they heard on the news.”

Following this year’s event, Handlery said he’d be surprised if the CEO couldn’t see the city’s performance as anything but a success. “We pulled it off,” he said. “When you do it right, the people who attend will communicate that. I think that’s what [Benioff’s] looking for so he can be supportive of the city, but also show that he’s listening.”

As city tourism officials prepare for the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in November, in which world leaders from 21 countries are bound for downtown, the positive outcome from Dreamforce is a source of reassurance that San Francisco remains competitive for citywide conventions.

“Our city built upon the success of last year’s [Dreamforce] to make this year’s event even better,” Alex Bastion, president and CEO of the Hotel Council, wrote to SFGATE in a statement. “And if given the opportunity, we are ready to follow the trend to make next year’s Dreamforce even better than this year.”