San Antonio – Visit San Antonio welcomed people from different industries to the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center for the Cvent CONNECT Conference this week.
“Cvent Connect is an annual user and industry conference that we host every year for our customers and our prospects in the events industry,” said Rachel Andrews, head of global events at CVENT Connect.
This conference gave thousands of people an opportunity to explore the city and culture.
“San Antonio has been amazing partners,” Andrews said. “I’ve been working with Visit San Antonio for years on Cvent CONNECT. They’ve been a sponsor for years. They’re a big part of our industry. And they really came forward with an amazing bid to host in the city.”
The event attracted about 4,000 in-person participants and 6,000 virtually.
Many conference participants are visiting local restaurants and staying in area hotels.
“I was at the Pearl district last night, and they had a lot of nice, cute restaurants,” said Sarah McNabb with Access Destination Services.
The influx of visitors stimulates spending across various sectors, including retail, entertainment, and transportation.
“We measure events through what’s called economic impact. So we’re measuring attendees’ spending; we’re measuring a bunch of different variables. We have deployed our teams to be able to focus on bringing more events here than we ever have before,” said Lance Wheeler, vice president of Corporate and Intermediary Sales at Visit SA.
Visit SA said the city hosted 89 convention center events for Fiscal Year 2019. For Fiscal Year 2024, Visit SA brought 98 convention center events, and the organization is already planning events for next year.
“2025 is one of our best years that we’re going to have looking into the future. We have some really large events coming back,” Wheeler said.
Some participants are excited to return and connect with the city again.
“The hospitality here is incredible. We have had so many attendees, made comments of just how friendly everybody is, how inclusive the city has been, how amazing and walkable it is,” Wheeler said.