Over the past year, major cities around the world have expanded their convention centers, grown their hotel room inventories and welcomed new flights to attract large meetings and events, the 2024 Convention Cities Index reveals. For planners, these feel like boom times again in an industry that not too long ago was paralyzed by the pandemic.
What Is the Convention Cities Index?
The Convention Cities Index is a first-of-its-kind resource developed by Northstar Meetings Group to help time-strapped planners and decision-makers track such changes and make informed site-selection choices. A weighted ranking system is used to determine the top 25 U.S. cities and top 25 global cities that are ideally suited to hosting large conventions.
Using the CCi, planners can evaluate and compare potential host cities according to the site-selections factors that are most pertinent to their events. The June 2024 CCi also can be compared to previous editions — which date back to 2020 — allowing event organizers to note shifts in city metrics before, during and after the pandemic.
How Is It Calculated?
The Convention Cities Index relies on extensive research and a weighted methodology to calculate the final scores for each destination. Cities are evaluated based on the following criteria:
- The amount of indoor exhibit space at each city’s largest convention center
- The number of hotel rooms in the city
- The average cost of a hotel room
- The travel time (without traffic) from the nearest major international airport to the convention center
- The number of direct flights per month to the destination
- The city’s safety level for travelers
Note: Some cities have more than one convention center that meets the exhibit-space criteria. The CCi data for these cities includes the total exhibit space, all nearby hotels and the average travel time from all eligible convention centers to the nearest international airport.
Key Findings
Data from the 2024 Convention Cities Index shows major fluctuations from the pandemic are moderating while the meetings industry moves into a more traditional growth mode. Steady increases in hotel rates, airlift and safety scores were seen across many U.S. and global cities. Among the findings:
- Average monthly flights to U.S. CCi cities are up 7 percent over the past six months, while global destinations experienced an average increase of 10 percent.
- New York remains the most expensive of all CCi destinations, averaging $441 per night. Indianapolis is the most wallet-friendly U.S. CCi city at $166.
- London has the highest hotel rates abroad ($283), while Chinese cities offer the best prices — averaging only $111 per night.
- Singapore scored top marks for traveler safety (95 out of 100 possible points), followed by Munich (91 points). Phoenix and San Diego are the safest cities on the U.S. list, scoring 84 and 83 points respectively.
Use the form above to download the full results and see the top 25 U.S. cities and top 25 global cities that made this year’s list.