Clean Air Matters!
Whether you feel meeting planners are ahead of the curve or behind the curve, cities themselves are recognizing the importance of environmental responsibility and doing something about it.
That’s why for 2019, we’ve added a seventh ranking factor – air quality – as a city’s most visible sign of environmental responsibility, but we never expected it to change the rankings as much as it did. Two time top 25 destinations like Cincinnati and Salt Lake City as well as last year’s new darling, Raleigh, didn’t even make the list this year.
Air quality definitely hurt Vegas (#1 in 2017 and 2018) and another top ten ranked city Denver but did not keep either of them off the list. At the same time, it helped propel Honolulu, Hawaii and Portland, Oregon to the top spots and led to very respectable showing for several cities breaking into this year’s rankings for the first time.
Optimizing the convention experience has always involved give and take as no destination offers everything. That’s why for the past three years, we’ve ranked cities by a sum of factors including affordability of hotel rooms, ease of access, safety, walkability, promotional appeal and weather.
The city of San Jose goal has set a goal to be powered by 100% renewable energy by 2022. Hawaii is the first state in the U.S. to set a state-wide goal of 100% renewable electricity by 2045
As other cities improve, they will move up in our rankings. The city of Orlando has committed to 100% clean, renewable energy by 2030 and community-wide 100% clean electricity by 2050!
Click on any of the cities below to see the details
or use filters to do your own convention city ranking.
Top 25 – Summary of Results:
Destination Marketing Organizations/Top cities’ points out of 5
Meet Hawaii 4.28
Travel Portland 4.28
New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau 4.14
Greater Miami CVB 4.14
Visit Seattle 4.14
Travel Tacoma 4.14
Austin CVB 4
Greater Boston CVB 4
San Diego Tourism Authority 4
San Francisco Travel 4
Visit Orlando 4
NYC & Company 3.86
CVB of Greater Portland 3.86
Daytona Beach Area CVB 3.86
Discover The Palm Beaches 3.86
Meet Minneapolis 3.86
Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau 3.86
Rochester MN Convention & Visitors Bureau 3.86
San Jose Convention & Visitors Bureau 3.86
Savannah CVB 3.86
Visit Charlotte 3.86
Visit Phoenix 3.86
Visit Tampa Bay 3.86
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority 3.86
VISIT DENVER 3.86
Ranking factors:
See details of criteria for the ranking of the best convention cities in 2019>
Sources:
https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/searchresults.xhtml
https://censtats.census.gov/cbpnaic/cbpnaic.shtml
https://www.bestplaces.net
http://openflights.org/airport/HND
https://www.faa.gov/airports/planning_capacity/passenger_allcargo_stats/passenger/media/cy15-cargo-airports.pdf
https://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/104877
https://www.walkscore.com/
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/land-based-station-data/land-based-datasets/climate-normals/1981-2010-normals-data</h4 id=”footnote”>
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