SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio’s tourism industry will get a big boost next month as the U.S. Travel Association’s IPW convention is headed to San Antonio for the first time and is expected to generate millions of dollars for the city.
“This is the Super Bowl of international travel for the United States. It’s the most important meeting that we could ever host in San Antonio,” said David Gonzalez, VP of media relations for Visit San Antonio.
IPW is considered to be the nation’s largest travel trade show, promoting travel to the U.S. from the rest of the world. Visit San Antonio bid on and was awarded IPW 2023 by the U.S. Travel Association in 2016.
Attendees will be from more than 70 countries.
“More than 5,000 people are going to come to San Antonio, including more than 500 media from across the world. It’s going to be a great single shot to get San Antonio on the worldwide stage,” said Gonzalez.
IPW 2023 is expected to generate an estimated $614 million in international visitor spending for San Antonio within three years and drive an additional 395,000 international visitors to the city. It’s also the latest signal that the city’s tourism and hospitality industry is bouncing back after the pandemic.
In 2021, the industry generated more than $16 billion in economic impact, which is about 93% of pre-pandemic figures, according to Visit San Antonio’s annual report. The report also showed the industry supported 128,000 local jobs.
Two recent conventions in San Antonio, Ace Hardware Corporation and American Football Coaches Association, generated nearly $18 million in economic impact for the city.
“We’ve had two corporate groups in the last couple of months that have come in, each with more than 6,000 visitors and meaning more than $10 million worth of economic impact for the city,” said Gonzalez.
Gonzalez said Visit San Antonio expects to return to pre-pandemic convention and meeting levels by the end of 2024.
Hotel occupancy rates are also getting back on track. Visit San Antonio reported 31.7 million people visited San Antonio in 2021.
“By the end of 2023, we should be back in total occupancy levels to what we were pre-pandemic. Slowly but surely, we are making a great comeback, and actually, San Antonio is making a faster comeback than other cities,” said Gonzalez.
IPW 2023 will be held at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center from May 20-24. The goal is to get the city on the worldwide stage.
“You can’t buy the media exposure you’re going to get from all these media. It would be millions and millions of dollars in media value for all of the great coverage we’re going to get,” said Gonzalez. “We’re really anticipating thousands upon thousands of stories to come out about San Antonio explaining why people want to travel here.”
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