For years, San Francisco has served as the backdrop to many high-profile corporate events. Take Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce, for example, which welcomes upwards of 170,000 attendees from around the world to the city each year. It’s the largest recurring event to happen in San Francisco, according to Nicole Rogers, the executive vice president and chief sales officer of the San Francisco Travel Association.
Other staple San Fran recurrences: TechCrunch Disrupt, which caters to tech-industry innovators, leaders and startups; the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference; the Game Developers Conference; and the Saas-focused SaaStr Annual, just to name a few.
And they’re all happening in a post-COVID era, which is impressive considering the state of San Francisco just five years ago, when the mecca for startup culture, in-office innovations and tentpole annual events was not only plagued by the pandemic, but also challenged by an onslaught of retail theft, homelessness and a hotel strike in the months and years that followed.
As of January, there were already 59% more events slated for the city’s 2 million-square-foot Moscone Center, The San Francisco Standard reported. “Hotel room nights associated with those events are forecasted to increase by around 60%—or 270,00—to 670,000 this year,” Rogers added in an interview with Vendelux.
The growth could be attributed to an uptick in organizations bringing events back to the tech hub. The Snowflake Summit, for instance, is headed to San Francisco this June, followed by Microsoft Ignite come November. And the Specialty Food Association recently announced that its recently revamped Winter FancyFood Show, now called the Winter FancyFaire*, is headed to San Fran in 2027.
Why, then, does Cvent rank San Francisco as No. 21 in its 2024 “Top US Meetings Destinations” list? Cvent reported that it shortlists venues with the help of a database of hotels, resorts and venues that analyzes more than $16 billion of MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) business spent throughout the year. Rankings are then determined by a set of qualifying criteria, that includes the number of total room nights booked; and the number of unique electronic request-for-proposals (RFPs), among other things.
Rogers shrugged off the lackluster ranking. “Rankings differ based on a number of factors, but our meetings and events calendar speaks for itself,” she said, noting that aside from major corporate events, San Francisco has also played host to major sporting events. (The 2025 NBA All-Star Game took place at the city’s Chase Center in February, SailGP’s season will include races at a San Francisco yacht club in March and the 2025 Laver Cup tennis tournament is headed there in September.)
“This year, we are very excited to welcome the Golden State Valkyries, a WNBA expansion team that will play at the Chase Center,” Rogers added.
“No other city offers as much as San Francisco does in such a compact footprint. We’re an extremely well-connected city, with nonstop flights to more than 50 international destinations and 88 domestic cities,”
Rogers said of her longtime home. It’s also worth mentioning that “the city is the global hub of AI and innovation.” After all, Silicon Valley is in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Vendelux’s data paints a bit of a different picture than Cvent’s. In its recent report, titled “The Top 100 Most Anticipated B2B Events of 2025,” the B2B event intelligence platform analyzed search volume on its platform—as well as interactions from thousands of event profs who request information about events for planning their sponsorship strategy—to determine not only the top 100 most-anticipated events happening this year, but to see which destinations are top-of-mind for event professionals.
Unlike Cvent, Vendelux’s ranking included international cities. Still, San Francisco was reported as the second-most sought-after city for events in 2025. The only hub to fare better was Las Vegas.
The No. 2 ranking is evident when looking forward, as Salesforce announced earlier this year that it inked a deal to stay in San Francisco until at least 2027, per The San Francisco Standard. In addition, Microsoft Ignite 2025, taking place for the first time in San Francisco on Nov. 17, has promised to bring more than 10,000 attendees to the Moscone Center, Rogers said.
Aside from the convention center’s proximity to restaurants, theaters, the Yerba Buena Gardens, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of the African Diaspora, Rogers said that San Francisco’s sustainability initiatives are a big draw for event hosts like Salesforce—and create real partnerships between corporations and the community. Dreamforce, for example, offers chances for attendees to offset their travel-related emissions right on-site with the help of composting bins for meal packaging, recycling bins for badges and bike valet, just to name a few initiatives. This type of commitment “also helps showcase other aspects of what San Francisco has to offer,” Rogers said. “San Francisco is the only city in the world to have achieved the most advanced LEED Platinum certification for its convention center and airport.”
Whether event profs agree that San Francisco is the No. 2-best city to host events, or No. 21, keep in mind that the temperature hovers between 40°F and 70°F year-round, per Rogers, so “the city is a perfect spot for a ‘cool-cation’ in peak summer when temperatures are high across the US.” It also has a cocktail scene that’s boomed recently with the opening of watering holes like Starlite, on the rooftop of The Beacon Grand hotel—”a go-to for groups,” per Rogers. “The bar was previously, and famously, known as Harry Denton’s Starlight Room, so it has a rich history in a beautiful setting with the city as your backdrop,” she added.
In a lasting thought, Rogers encouraged event profs to not be shy in collaborating with the San Francisco Travel Association. After all, “our team knows San Francisco inside and out and can provide personalized recommendations—whether it’s securing a unique location, coordinating local experiences, or offering insight into the latest developments in the city.”
“But don’t wait too long—San Francisco is happening now,” Rogers concluded.
