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Orlando (left) landed in first place on the MINT+ 2023 Top 250 Report, a list of the DMO industry’s largest rotating conventions in North America. Chicago (top) was second. New Orleans (center) and San Diego (right) tied for third.
According to the recently released MINT+ 2023 Top 250 Report, the collection of the DMO industry’s largest rotating conventions in North America isn’t as large a universe “as one would think.”
The report — a collaboration between Destinations International (DI) and digital marketing and data insights company Simpleview and its consulting company 2Synergize — used the following criteria to define the top 250 conventions: they must rotate destinations and require a minimum of 2,800 rooms on peak, either in the past five years or in the future. Some of the top 250 conventions, which excluded sporting and events and festivals, could use as many as 23,000 peak rooms.
Among the report’s findings:
- In 2023, 233 of the top 250 conventions are scheduled to meet, down from the 246 events that met before the pandemic in 2019. This is due to the fact that some of the top 250 meet on a biannual or triannual basis and that several event that chose to meet virtually were excluded from the data.
- More than one-third of the top 250 conventions were scheduled to meet in the first half of 2023. The next most-popular time period to meet is in Q4, when 27 percent of the top 250 convene.
- Twenty destinations will host 82 percent of the top 250 conventions in 2023. Orlando ranks first, followed by Chicago. New Orleans and San Diego are tied for third place.
- The most popular region to host the 250 top conventions is the Southeast (with a 38-percent share), followed by the West, capturing 31 percent of the top 250 convention market.
For an automatic download of the full report, click MINT+ 2023 Top 250 Report.
Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.