Convention Cities Index 2025

Northstar’s annual research has been expanded to include site-selection data for more than 60 cities and convention centers across the United States.

2025 Convention Cities Index

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Since launching in 2020, Northstar Meetings Group’s Convention Cities Index has served as a go-to guide to aid event planners in their site-selection process. For this latest edition, the research team has refreshed and upgraded the index to serve planners looking to host gatherings in the United States.

What Is the Convention Cities Index?

The Convention Cities Index is a data-driven resource designed to help event planners compare and evaluate potential destinations for their future events.

It offers data profiles on more than 60 venues across 38 U.S. states and territories. The data profile for each destination includes:

  1. Total exhibit space at the convention center;
  2. Total number of hotel rooms in the city;
  3. Average hotel cost;
  4. Travel time from the convention center to the nearest international airport; and
  5. Number of direct flights per month into the destination.

What's New in the 2025 CCi?

While previous editions of the Convention Cities Index focused only on large venues that offered at least 500,000 square feet of exhibit space, the threshold for consideration on the 2025 list has been lowered to 100,000 square feet, to provide a wider range of host-city options across the United States.

The CCi now features more tier-two and tier-three cities, making it easier for planners of all event sizes and budgets to find a good fit. The list is organized alphabetically and is designed to serve as a directory, rather than a ranking.

Key Findings

Using the Convention Cities Index, planners can evaluate which destinations meet the specific needs of their group, depending on factors such as budget, space or accessibility. Data findings from the 2025 CCi include:

  • The average daily hotel rate for all U.S. CCi cities is $218. The most affordable destination is Omaha, Neb., at $146 per night.
  • Las Vegas offers the most hotel rooms with nearly 160,000 rooms available for event planners and their attendees.
  • Chicago is most accessible destination with roughly 38,000 direct flights into the city’s airports per month.
  • The Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville and the Donald E. Stephens Convention is Rosemont, Ill., feature the shortest travel time with just a 4-minute drive between the venues and the nearest airport. 

Use the form above to download the full results and view site-selection data for major meeting destinations across the U.S.