America’s convention center business has been declining for two decades. The 126 million attendees in year 2000 fell to 86 million attendees in 2010. Meanwhile, the amount of convention space has increased from 40 million square feet in 1990, to 53 million square feet in year 2000, and to 70 million square feet in 2010. A former member of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority lamented last year that “Logic rarely has a place in the convention business.”
Local officials have changed their sales pitch, saying that convention centers should no longer be judged by how many hotels rooms, restaurants, and local attractions they help fill. Now the expansion of convention center facilities can “demonstrate to the world that we have unlimited confidence in our city and what it can do, not only as a convention destination but as the center of the most important trends in hospitality, science, health and education.”
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