International Pow Wow is a big travel show held annually with the intention of sparking more leisure and business travel to and all around the United States. Every year the gathering - which brings international and U.S. media together with tourist boards, tour operators, hoteliers, airlines and the like - is held in a different U.S. city. This year, it rolled out over five days in San Francisco, the first time Pow Wow has been in the city by the Bay since 1992.
It takes a real city - diverse, dynamic, with layers of culture, entertainment and history - to put the wow in Pow Wow; a mere convention center surrounded by tract homes or desert sands won't do it. San Francisco did it. Although San Francisco, in all candor, can be smugly self-regarding, it delivers on most of its promises to travelers. In fact, San Francisco courts travelers. And no wonder - travel and tourism generates $8 billion in annual revenue, making it the biggest business in the city by revenue. The San Francisco Travel Association - the renamed former convention and visitors bureau - says the travel biz accounts for about 67,000 jobs in the city, directly or indirectly. That includes hotel workers, airline employees, cabbies, bartenders, staff at the city's esteemed restaurants and others.
Like all conventions, Pow Wow is mostly about speeches and meetings. Organizers claimed that the 5,000 attendees - mostly from Europe, Asia and the U.S., itself - held some 70,000 meetings, including a good many one-on-ones. I was in a few of them. Typically, journalists drift over to tables staffed in a big ballroom in the convention center - Moscone Center, in San Francisco's case - for short conversations and the exchange of business cards, as media explain to travel vendors what they are interested in covering, and vendors tout what they have to offer. If you've ever wondered how the seemingly bottomless demand for content is generated in newspapers, magazines, Web sites and elsewhere, this is how: It comes out of structured and unstructured networking.
San Francisco has been a popular destination for years, but not even popular places can stand still. Some of the wow factor is always there, but some is built and newly introduced, such as the beautiful, extensively renovated terminal 2 at San Francisco International Airport (www.flysfo.com), which reopened in April after being closed for 10 years. Other travel-themed attractions are in the pipeline, including:
* A $56 million USD touch-up of Moscone Center, set for next year.
* The 34th America's Cup finals, in 2013 (www.americascup.com/sanfrancisco).
* The relocation of the innovative, hands-on childrens' science museum the Exploratorium (www.exploratorium.edu) to Embarcadero Piers 15-17, also in 2013.
* A long-promised new cruiseship terminal, scheduled to open at Pier 27 in 2014 (www.sfport.org).
Also coming:
* In 2016, the completely rebuilt downtown Transbay Transit Center opens, replacing a delapidated, recently demolished facility built in the 1930s.
* In 2016, the downtown San Francisco Museum of Modern Art plans to triple its gallery space (www.sfmoma.org).
* The long-term renovation of Treasure Island, a big, manmade island in San Francisco Bay in the shadow of the Bay Bridge is scheduled to be completed, with new hotels, restaurants, housing and a marina, also in the busy, busy year 2016.
Finally, in 2018, a new central subway will connect San Francisco's long-struggling southeastern neighborhoods with a direct light-rail connection to mainstays such as Chinatown, Moscone Center and Union Square.
Thanks to San Francisco Travel for the information.
Showing posts with label International Pow Wow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label International Pow Wow. Show all posts
Monday, June 6, 2011
Saturday, June 4, 2011
A Tale of Two Terminals
So, I left Las Vegas for San Francisco and the next big travel show: Pow Wow, the annual international marketplace for travel vendors and media organized by the U.S. Travel Association. This entailed a short flight from the desert's neon oasis to the city by the bay.
I got to Vegas's McCarron International Airport (www.mccarron.com) early after a short taxi ride, so I thought I'd just settle in and wait for my flight. This was a mistake. The food was standardized fast-food grub, the lights and noises of the one-armed bandits - there are, of course, slot machines in the airport, this being Vegas - were non-stop and distracting and 'ere long, I was thoroughly tired of the place. To be fair, Las Vegas airport authorities have big plans to upgrade the busy facility. Right now, they are reopening gates in Concourse C that serve Southwest Airlines that were closed for nearly a year while work went on.
Anxious to move on, I wandered over to the Virgin America boarding gate and asked if I could get on an earlier flight. Turns out, I could. Bliss! The flight was fast and pleasant and almost before I knew it, I was deplaning at San Francisco International Airport's (www.flysfo.com) just remodeled and reopened terminal 2.
The only problem was I was so early that I wasn't able to leave the airport right away. I would still have to wait, it would just be at SFO instead of Sin City International. That turned out to be just fine.
I settled in with a back issue of The New Yorker, nestled in a Jetsons-style futuristic chair near long tables where passengers fired-up their laptops and just across the aisle from a charging station for electronic devices. I bought a coffee at Peet's, the first-rate, Bay Area-based coffee and tea chain, and proceeded to pass a pleasant hour and a half. The contrast with Las Vegas was striking. SFO's terminal 2- the former international terminal, closed in December 2000 and finally re-opened after an extensive re-do in April of this year - has an almost feline coolness and repose, whereas McCarron conveys the frenetic energy of its home city. SFO was so relaxing, I was in no hurry to leave. When I finally did head for the exits, I passed a museum-quality exhibition of silver jewelry, eyeballed one-of-a-kind food shops of near-artisan qualaity and pulled my wheelie under the natural light that poured in through the skylight overhead.
Like most people, I wouldn't deliberately choose to spend oodles of time in an airport. But if you're going to do that anywhere, SFO - at least the reborn terminal 2 and the handsome, 11-year-old international terminal - is one place to do it.
I got to Vegas's McCarron International Airport (www.mccarron.com) early after a short taxi ride, so I thought I'd just settle in and wait for my flight. This was a mistake. The food was standardized fast-food grub, the lights and noises of the one-armed bandits - there are, of course, slot machines in the airport, this being Vegas - were non-stop and distracting and 'ere long, I was thoroughly tired of the place. To be fair, Las Vegas airport authorities have big plans to upgrade the busy facility. Right now, they are reopening gates in Concourse C that serve Southwest Airlines that were closed for nearly a year while work went on.
Anxious to move on, I wandered over to the Virgin America boarding gate and asked if I could get on an earlier flight. Turns out, I could. Bliss! The flight was fast and pleasant and almost before I knew it, I was deplaning at San Francisco International Airport's (www.flysfo.com) just remodeled and reopened terminal 2.
The only problem was I was so early that I wasn't able to leave the airport right away. I would still have to wait, it would just be at SFO instead of Sin City International. That turned out to be just fine.
I settled in with a back issue of The New Yorker, nestled in a Jetsons-style futuristic chair near long tables where passengers fired-up their laptops and just across the aisle from a charging station for electronic devices. I bought a coffee at Peet's, the first-rate, Bay Area-based coffee and tea chain, and proceeded to pass a pleasant hour and a half. The contrast with Las Vegas was striking. SFO's terminal 2- the former international terminal, closed in December 2000 and finally re-opened after an extensive re-do in April of this year - has an almost feline coolness and repose, whereas McCarron conveys the frenetic energy of its home city. SFO was so relaxing, I was in no hurry to leave. When I finally did head for the exits, I passed a museum-quality exhibition of silver jewelry, eyeballed one-of-a-kind food shops of near-artisan qualaity and pulled my wheelie under the natural light that poured in through the skylight overhead.
Like most people, I wouldn't deliberately choose to spend oodles of time in an airport. But if you're going to do that anywhere, SFO - at least the reborn terminal 2 and the handsome, 11-year-old international terminal - is one place to do it.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Pow Wow - Yowza!
This year's enormous U.S. Travel Association confab, International Pow Wow, isn't set to take place until next month in Orlando, Florida, but already organizers are beavering away, planning next year's gathering in San Francisco. Along with the World Travel Mart in London and the annual global travel industry version of Woodstock in Berlin, Pow Wow ranks among the leading travel biz meetings on the planet. So, it takes a lot of planning.
Why should you care? Well, with more than 400 international journalists set to cover it, Pow Wow, which includes media tours, news conferences and networking opportunities galore, will go a long way toward shaping the stories you see, read and hear in the next year about traveling to and within the United States. And the sales opportunities that all that face-time - the event lasts five days - affords to people who run hotels, airlines, tourist boards, tour companies, cruise-ship lines and the like will help determine what those people put on offer for travelers.
Travel-biz people from more than 70 countries are expected to attend the Orlando edition of Pow Wow. There will be some 1,100 information booths in South Hall at Orlando's Orange County Convention Center and 5,000 travel biz types on hand to visit them.
For the host city, the event, which changes venues every year, is a big deal.
Next year's International Pow Wow will be held at San Francisco's Moscone Center, and tourism people in the northern California city are even as we speak drawing up to-do lists, planning social and business networking events and anticipating receipts.
According to numbers-crunchers at the nonprofit San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau (www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com), the host organization for the 2011 Pow Wow, to be held next May 21-25, the big travel show will generate $4.5 million in event-related spending (hotel rooms, labor, convention center food and beverage sales) and $2 million in spending by individual attendees (restaurant meals, shopping, taxis). In the long term, all those journalists parachuting into San Francisco are expected to write 300 to 400 articles about the city; the stories will appear in media outlets with a combined circulation estimated at 100 million. By the SFCVB's reckoning, that worldwide exposure is equal to spending $5.3 million on advertising to promote the city.
So, yes, travel is big business.
U.S. Travel, Pow Wow's sponsoring umbrella organization, was for years known as the Travel Industry Association of America, till it changed its name recently. U.S. Travel (www.ustravel.org) doesn't yet know where it will hold Pow Wow in 2012, but the host city for 2013 has already been selected: It's Las Vegas, baby.
Come 2013, what happens in Vegas will presumably NOT stay in Vegas.
Why should you care? Well, with more than 400 international journalists set to cover it, Pow Wow, which includes media tours, news conferences and networking opportunities galore, will go a long way toward shaping the stories you see, read and hear in the next year about traveling to and within the United States. And the sales opportunities that all that face-time - the event lasts five days - affords to people who run hotels, airlines, tourist boards, tour companies, cruise-ship lines and the like will help determine what those people put on offer for travelers.
Travel-biz people from more than 70 countries are expected to attend the Orlando edition of Pow Wow. There will be some 1,100 information booths in South Hall at Orlando's Orange County Convention Center and 5,000 travel biz types on hand to visit them.
For the host city, the event, which changes venues every year, is a big deal.
Next year's International Pow Wow will be held at San Francisco's Moscone Center, and tourism people in the northern California city are even as we speak drawing up to-do lists, planning social and business networking events and anticipating receipts.
According to numbers-crunchers at the nonprofit San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau (www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com), the host organization for the 2011 Pow Wow, to be held next May 21-25, the big travel show will generate $4.5 million in event-related spending (hotel rooms, labor, convention center food and beverage sales) and $2 million in spending by individual attendees (restaurant meals, shopping, taxis). In the long term, all those journalists parachuting into San Francisco are expected to write 300 to 400 articles about the city; the stories will appear in media outlets with a combined circulation estimated at 100 million. By the SFCVB's reckoning, that worldwide exposure is equal to spending $5.3 million on advertising to promote the city.
So, yes, travel is big business.
U.S. Travel, Pow Wow's sponsoring umbrella organization, was for years known as the Travel Industry Association of America, till it changed its name recently. U.S. Travel (www.ustravel.org) doesn't yet know where it will hold Pow Wow in 2012, but the host city for 2013 has already been selected: It's Las Vegas, baby.
Come 2013, what happens in Vegas will presumably NOT stay in Vegas.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)