There are indicators that government officials are abandoning resort conference destinations in favor of the U.S. capital.
Federal agencies no longer seem eager to host their conferences in Las Vegas, Hawaii and Orlando.
Orlando and Las Vegas, in particular, are major tradeshow and meeting destinations, being home to the second and third largest convention centers in the nation, respectively. Yet an analysis by USA Today indicates they are no longer favored by the government despite their conference facilities.
USA Today reporter Gregory Korte stated that hotel bookings, associated with conferences, for Las Vegas were down by 81 percent. This was 88 percent for Honolulu and 100 percent for Orlando. Benefitting from the government’s retreat from resort locations is Washington, D.C.
According to Korte, hotel booking for Washington, D.C. climbed from $2.7 million in 2010 to $57.5 million in 2013.
This trend comes after the federal government was ordered to reduce spending on travel and conferences in the wake of budget cuts and conference spending scandals and a June CEIR Index that attributed a 0.2 percent decline in attendance to business-to-business exhibitions to the weakness of government-employee participation.
To stop the U.S. government from discriminating against Las Vegas due to the exorbitant conference spending of some federal agencies in resort destinations, Nevada government officials introduced a bill on the subject.
