Mark McMinn, director of sales for Team San Jose, describes San Jose as "the most underrated city in California." In a way, McMinn might be right.
San Jose is the largest city in Northern California, the third largest in the state, and the 10th largest city in the U.S. by population. At the heart of Silicon Valley, it's also home to a number of major U.S. tech companies, from Adobe and eBay to Cisco Systems and Samsung's North American headquarters. In January 2014, Careerbliss.com ranked San Jose and the surrounding metro area that includes Sunnyvale and Santa Clara as the No. 1 "happiest place to work in the U.S."
"It's a small big city," explains McMinn. "We have all the amenities you look for in a solid meetings destination: great airlift, a great airport, a great convention center with hotels attached to it, wonderful restaurants, shopping, museums. Everything is in a campus-like, walkable setting. In San Jose, you can be the big fish in a smaller pond, as it were."
And when planners bring their meetings here, McMinn says they can be assured that they've come to the right place: "We're really about the business of a business meeting." .
In many ways, San Jose continues to evolve and invest in its infrastructure to be an ideal MICE destination. Two years ago, it completed a $130-million renovation and expansion of its San Jose McEnery Convention Center, giving it a total of 550,000 square feet of usable space.
The addition of the nearby Levi's Stadium (home of the San Francisco 49ers) in Santa Clara, CA, as well as the Avaya Stadium (home of the San Jose Earthquakes soccer team) in San Jose have also helped attract larger events, adds McMinn. The Avaya Stadium can host groups of up to 18,000, and the Levi's Stadium will host next year's Super Bowl.
The convention center expansion and new stadiums are not the only new developments that have taken place in recent years. "The investment that's being made in the city's infrastructure from the community is huge," McMinn says. "Billions are being invested in our hotel products with rebranding and renovating and building. We're coming into our own as a big city; there's lots of investment in our community from every demographic -- employment, residential, hotel development, restaurants, entertainment. Things are good."
With regard to hotels, The Westin San Jose recently opened in downtown, and it occupies a 171-room historic hotel property just steps away from the convention center. The Fairmont San Jose in downtown also recently completed a $1-million upgrade of its main building's breakout rooms. Hotel Valencia has undergone a major renovation, adding a new 672-square-foot roofed seating area. The 506-room San Jose Marriott, which is connected to the convention center, is also undergoing guest-room renovations that are expected to be complete by the end of September.
The city has a number of new venues ideal for meeting groups. The arts and culture district of San Jose, named SoFA, is home to the new SoFA Market, which houses a variety of food-and-beverage vendors. It's a casual place for attendees to sample a number of local eats, from ramen and burgers to craft cocktails and locally roasted coffee.
Video game-minded attendees will love the new AFK eSports Gaming Lounge. Measuring more than 15,000 square feet, this is much more than your typical cyber café. It's a place for gamers to meet, compete, and enjoy all things related to eSports, and it also has a relaxing patio and various board games for visitors to play during their visit.
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This article appears in the August 2015 issue of Successful Meetings.