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Business View Magazine
er Walk in historic downtown, placing attendees within
walking distance to so much of what drives meeting
attendance in San Antonio: historic sites including the
Alamo, local restaurants, museums, theatres, shops,
and thousands of hotel rooms.
Sawaya says that it is the Center’s goal to have the
highest economic impact on the community that it
possibly can. In order to achieve that objective, it holds
very few local events, but rather aims to bring in visi-
tors from around the world. “Most convention centers
don’t cover all of their costs,” he explains. “We’re a
loss leader. It’s the hotel occupancy tax collections that
pay for our debt service and operations. If you do local
shows, you’re not collecting hotel occupancy taxes to
cover that.” Happily, he reports that the Center oper-
ates at one of the highest occupancy rates in the U.S.
“We’ve reached our practical maximum several times
over the last decade. We operate at about 70 percent
year in and year out. My colleagues and competitors
just call me and tell me they hate me,” he quips.
The Center’s recent re-opening was the culmination of
ten years of planning. “We started studying the mar-
ket back in 2006,” Sawaya says, “and then did plan-
ning and development along the way, identified our re-
sources, and strategically approached it with the idea
in mind that we would be open by now. Essentially, our
goals were to have prime, contiguous exhibit space
that was greater than where we were, previously, and
to be in the over-500,000 square foot of exhibit space
inventory, because it puts you in a different category
when you have over 500,000. It’s kind of a milestone.
Other than that, we needed to have meeting space
that was located around exhibit halls. When you grow
organically, the way this facility had over the years, you
