People converse with each other during the SprayFoam 2022 Convention and Expo at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center last week.Throngs of sprayfoam housing contractors swarmed The Espee where a DJ, under multicolor disco lighting, blared Alan Jackson hits and the Barbie song from Danish pop group Aqua.
hotel operators, restaurateurs, bar owners and anyone with a stake in San Antonio’s downtown economy heard the clang of money from across the country pouring into the city. It’s a sound that fell silent at the onset of the pandemic, and its return is welcomed as yet another sign of the pandemic’s loosening grip on the city’s tourism economy.
But these conventions largely evaporated at the onset of the pandemic and have since returned haltingly — far slower than leisure tourism’s dramatic rejuvenation — amid variant spikes, year-long corporate planning cycles, and a growing comfort in the white collar world with substituting Zoom meetings over expensive mass gatherings.
Vaughn said the convention business could return to pre-pandemic levels as soon as the end of this year or the beginning of the next. Earlier in February, the Texas Music Educators Association kicked off convention season when it brought to the city a reported 26,000 teachers and students. That number is slightly less than it was in 2020, reflecting a wide trend of dampened attendance, but it marks an enormous influx of spenders in San Antonio that were not present last year. The organization’s 2020 convention in San Antonio was one of the city’s last before the pandemic struck.