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CONVENING LEADERS PREVIEW
What’s New
Ten things that have changed in San Diego since 1996— when PCMA last held its annual meeting there.
1. The San Diego Convention Center may soon have the largest exhibit hall and ballroom on the West Coast. First expanded in 2001, the center’s new Phase III project calls for adding 225,000 square feet of exhibit space, 101,000 square feet of meeting space, and a five-acre rooftop park overlooking San Diego Bay. 2. Social media is the hot, new marketing technology, and
the San Diego Convention Center can help you with the best approaches and tactics, disseminating updates and information to attendees using Facebook and Twitter. And planning citywide conventions continues to be a convenient, one- stop-shop experience, with the center handling them from start to finish, including arranging all hotel room blocks. 3. Similarly, the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau offers personalized site-inspection services tailored to meet your single- property needs. The CVB’s team cus- tomizes a complete itinerary, making all hotel and venue arrangements and appointments, and offers free round- trip airfare to San Diego for meeting planners who potentially book 400-plus room nights. 4. The CVB offers innovative iLead technology, a com-
plimentary online system that connects you with hotels best matching your meeting specifications, with hotel proposals received in real time. 5. Called The Green Build, a $1-billion improvement proj-
ect is expanding San Diego International Airport, adding 10 new gates while maintaining sustainability as a guiding principle. The
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project will be LEED Silver–certified when completed in 2013. 6. Downtown San Diego’s waterfront is getting a
makeover in 2012. Expect two acres of lush, green park space, world-class public art, walking paths, and groves of trees, located just a mile from the convention center. 7. Downtown hotels are booming. Eleven thousand
guest rooms—including two new headquarters hotels, the 1,190- room Hilton San Diego Bayfront and the 511-room Omni San Diego—have opened since 2004. Plus, the 1,360-room San Diego Marriott Marquis and Marina just fin- ished a major renovation, and the 1,625-room Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego will begin renovations next spring. 8. The San Diego region has
more than 130 conference and con- vention hotels, ranging from the luxuri- ous 249-room Grand Del Mar to the brand-new 108-room Valley View Casino & Hotel in rural East County. 9. Downtown’s historic
ON THEWATERFRONT: The San Diego Convention Center looks out over beau- tifulSan Diego Bay.
Gaslamp Quarter has been trans- formed into a dynamic hub of new din- ing, nightlife, and shopping,with 100 of the city’s finest restaurants,more than 40 nightclubs and bars, and retail.
10. San Diego’s newest venues include the USS Midway
Museum and the downtown galleries of the Museum of Contem- porary Art San Diego and The New Children’s Museum. And PETCO Park, the Padres’ architecturally stunning ballpark, accom- modates 50 to 42,000 delegates.
For more information about meeting in San Diego, visitwww.visitsandiego.com orwww.sandiego.org.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SDCVB