Look into a city's convention schedule before visiting

Visiting a destination when a big convention or trade event is in town can mean a lot of bad things for a trip, like congestion at top sites, restaurants without tables and inflated hotel room rates. And conventions—like Comic Con, which starts in L.A. later this week—are hosted in just about every big city, all across the calendar. They can be hard to anticipate.

So before booking a trip to a city, it’s a good idea to look into whether there will be a convention in town (and what the local holidays are). Google the city name and your travel dates, plus “convention” or “convention schedule,” and you’ll likely find lists like this one from L.A. Times writer Christopher Reynolds. In the Times story, Reynolds rounds up the big conventions planned in San Diego and San Francisco through 2020. In San Francisco, for example, Salesforce.com, Inc./Dreamforce 2019 will take place November 19-22 of this year. On those dates, some 60,000 could complicate a visit to S.F.

“These events aren’t necessarily deal-breakers,” the story says. “But as you’d expect during their biggest gatherings, hotel rates go up, availability goes down, and popular restaurants get busier near convention facilities. In cities where the average hotel room fetches anywhere from $169 (estimate for San Diego in 2019) to $219 (San Francisco in June), those numbers are worth watching.”

You may not always be able to change the dates of your trip, but knowing what’s in store in advance can help you plan. In short, more research ahead of a trip will almost always save you hassle later on. And if you’ve been thinking of visiting San Diego or San Francisco, you can see the upcoming convention schedule in each here.

 

 


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1 Comment On "Look Into a City's Convention Schedule Before Visiting"
  1. SM|

    Well, sometimes a convention schedule can work on your behalf. Once we needed to be in Boston for a special occasions and all hotels were booked solid. A look on the convention site for the city indicated there was the Seafood convention being held. What did we do? We went to the Seafood Convention site and signed up. A room was ours.

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