A state of San Francisco events scene roundtable discussion focused on how to share the resurrection story
For the truth about the past, present and future of events in The City by the Bay, Smart Meetings gathered a group of veteran meeting professionals for a “hospitali-tea spilling” at The Westin St. Francis San Francisco on Union Square. Listen in as these locals reminisce about San Francisco’s role in international order, cultural change, culinary breakthroughs and big business. The steeped collective is not sugarcoating the challenges The City has faced and opens up about prospects for the future of conferences in the larger Bay Area.
The Spillers
Alex Carvalho, CMP, DES: Manager of enterprise corporate events with Pacific Gas and Electric Company. She brings 20 years of experience in corporate event planning. She was previously with Kaiser Permanente, Hewlett Packard and Hospital Council of Northern & Central California. She is a Smart Women in Meetings Hall of Fame inductee.
Edward Perotti, CMP, CMM: Principle of EP Events & Experiences. He is an event designer, author, speaker and former executive creative director of global events brand experience with Pure Storage and senior director of global meetings, events and travel with VMware. He was born and raised in San Francisco’s Noe Valley.
Julie Van’t Hul: Vice president of sales, events and services with SF Travel. The Midwest native sits on the board of Yerba Buena Community Benefit District and describes herself as living in The City by choice.
Elaine Clancy: Director of sales and marketing with The Westin St. Francis San Francisco on Union Square. She has been with Marriott for almost 38 years, is a Bay Area native and received her Business Administration and Management degree from San Francisco State University.
Steeped in History
San Francisco’s deep hospitality roots set the stage for the hot takes. Milestones include The San Francisco Conference in 1945, where delegates from 50 nations met to create the United Nations of the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference and which has taken place at The Westin St. Francis every year for more than 30 years, and Salesforce’s Dreamforce, a citywide centered in the renovated Moscone Convention Center. The City has historically been where the world gathers to advance technology, government and business.
Van’t Hul pointed out that San Francisco has been a hospitality city going back to the Gold Rush. Pioneers brought spirit and tenacity to build North Beach and Chinatown. They settled in the bustling port town while keeping their culture intact. “You can still feel that authenticity in the neighborhoods,” she said.
San Francisco Stock and Bond Exchange established the City as the financial hub of the West in 1882. Wells Fargo and Visa are still headquartered in The City, and fintech companies SoFi, Intuit and Square are Bay Area developments.
The innovative DNA of the founders led to the creation of Stanford University and UC Berkeley, and the groundbreaking technology that has come out of the area goes back to the Shockley Transistor Corporation in 1955 in Palo Alto. “It’s ingrained in our culture here,” said Van’t Hul.
The hilly streets were also the scene of the Summer of Love and the cultural revolution, as evidenced in gayborhoods and the election of the first openly gay man in Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1977. That openness to diversity was a powerful source of growth for The City and pride for those around the table.
“This is home. It’s been a roller coaster ride, but this place doesn’t fall. It always comes back better,” said Perotti.
Perotti reminisced about how he gathered in the same room on the 32nd floor ballroom of The Westin to look out over the San Francisco skyline for his senior prom. His great-grandmother made her way to the area from Italy in 1909 and served as a neighborhood suffrage movement leader. He would take the streetcar downtown at age six with a nickel because it was so safe. He would meet his grandmother in her hat and gloves and go to the Woolworths lunch counter. Everyone talked to everyone else. “The City has always embraced differentness. It has always been about inclusion. San Francisco was the power child for the American Dream,” he said.
Learn More: Edward Perotti on What One Thing?
“Once you get here, it’s really hard to leave,” added Van’t Hul. The City she promotes is more than the 7 miles by 7 miles of the peninsula and includes thousands of miles of green spaces, forests, coastline, Silicone Valley, Wine Country and mountain foothills.
“It’s the people, the free spirit that captured me immediately,” Van’t Hul said. “It’s the freedom to express and be yourself, to let your wildest business ideas fly. The vibe is pretty unique.”
Strength in Hot Water
Another quintessential San Francisco trait going back to the beginning is resiliency. When dipped in hot water—or fire—The City gets stronger. The earthquake and fire of 1906 damaged both Fairmont San Francisco and Palace Hotel, a Luxury Collection Hotel, San Francisco, but they built back more opulent than ever and are still in-demand event spaces along with Intercontinental Mark Hopkins, which dates back to 1926 on Nob Hill. Read about the storied history of Westin St. Francis in the sidebar.
As the center of commerce and retail, The City also suffered on a larger scale when those industries collapsed during the dot-com bubble of 2000 and when the pandemic sent everyone shopping online. Now, The City is awash in AI developers, and a new experiential Nintendo store opened last month in Union Square. The former Macy’s Men’s Store transformed into a sleek new Convene coworking space. Resilience and reinvention are natural for this destination.
Carvalho, who has lived in the East Bay for 20 years, says she still catches her breath every time she crosses the Bay Bridge and glimpses The City emerging from what is affectionately known as Karl the Fog. “As soon as I pass Treasure Island, I look over and think, ‘I get to live in a place that is on most people’s bucket lists to visit.’ My favorite part of traveling is coming back home.”
She acknowledged that the last five years have been difficult as The City became a punching bag for national media, but will stand up for The Bay every time. “I feel very protective about San Francisco. People are saying things that are untrue,” she said.
The detractors may not have visited lately, she reasoned. “You can feel it when you walk on the streets. Conventions are coming back to Moscone.”
Perotti agreed that seeing is believing. “Even people who think they hate The City change their minds after they visit,” said Perotti.
Van’t Hul confirmed that in the wake of APEC, The City is welcoming more conventioners this year.
Read More: APEC and Dreamforce Showed Off Forward-Thinking San Francisco
“We’re seeing an uptick,” she said. New corporate conferences include the AI conferences HumanX and Hubspot’s INBOUND conference, along with the return of Snowflake Summit and Databricks’ Data + AI Summit for the intersection of data and AI. The Specialty Food Association is bringing the Winter FancyFaire to The City in 2027.
The day before the clinking of teacups at The Westin, Marriott International’s The Exchange, Association Masters event at San Francisco Marriott Marquis brought Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano and Chairman David S. Marriott. New San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie and San Francisco Travel CEO Anna Marie Presutti took the stage to attest that crime is down 30%, the number of events at Moscone Center is up 28% and the basketball influencer Charles Barkley is now a believer.
Many of the association planner attendees in the audience indicated that the event was their first time back since 2019, and they were pleasantly surprised.
SF Travel used the occasion to release “Believe in San Francisco” as the theme of a new video and ad campaign. The City will show off those iconic features on the world stage when it hosts Laver Cup tennis tournament in September, FIFA World Cup and Super Bowl LX in 2026, and all the spin-off gatherings around those major events.
“There’s been a real resurgence here.” Van’t Hul said. “Our job now is overcoming that narrative by getting people here to see the reality. We’re approachable and open.”
Perotti bemoaned the fact that news accounts focus on homeless people and stores closing—things that are happening in cities all over the country—but not the vibrancy of the neighborhoods. He advised doubling down on promoting the soul of the place. “You come here to get inspired, to taste real food from all over the world.”
Clancy agreed. “We don’t talk enough about how every day there’s something new here and a spirit that can move companies forward. They just need to come here and feel it.”
Those who have made the trip have discovered that luxury is thriving, and walking the scenic streets is inspiring.
Van’t Hul was emphatic. “We’re not coming back. We are back. We’ve been back!” Now the job is to reintroduce The City to the world. “We believe. We are creating and innovating.”
Perotti stressed that strategic meeting professionals have an obligation to be the owners of the truth, pushing back on decisionmakers when the narrative is incorrect. “We are not servants. Just because somebody tells you something doesn’t mean you do it. Our role is to give them what they need, not what they want,” he said. In his eyes, the art of the possibility of what can be created in a place like San Franciso makes fighting for it imperative.
“It’s Bay Area pride,” said Carvalho. From Monterey and Santa Clara, where Levi’s Stadium is located, to Oakland and Tahoe, this area has every type of experience.
Reading the Tea Leaves
As the group looked to the future, the resurgence of sports and commerce had everyone smiling. From the NBA All-Star Game and March Madness that happened at Chase Center this spring to more events at Oracle Park, The City is alive with activity. The loss of two sports teams from Oakland—the MLB Athletics and the NFL Raiders—is an opportunity to fill that void with a new cultural center.
“San Francisco is well on its way to recovering beyond 2020 levels, but we need to bring our neighbors with us as one ecosystem,” said Carvalho. “What happens across the bridge affects what happens here and in San Jose.”
Perotti agreed with the need to spread the real story of the region’s potential worldwide, but stressed the importance of pushing the envelope. “Let’s be a little provocative and not try to be like every other city. We are where innovation is born, and big ideas happen.”
Van’t Hul quoted SF Travel CEO Anna Marie Presutti as saying that the best way for meeting professionals to see the progress The City has made is to witness it in person. Make your own custom fortune cookie, experience the Irish coffee tradition at The Buena Vista, ride a cable car and an autonomous vehicle on the same street or a hundred other experiences only available in San Francisco. “Get the SF out here,” she said.
A History of Building Back Better
The Westin St. Francis documents its storied history dating back to 1904 in a museum alcove around the corner from a new celebrity restaurant being developed on the first floor. General Manager Clif Clark—who also bears responsibility for five other local properties: Marriott Marquis, W San Francisco, JW Marriott, The Clancy and Marriott Union Square—is the unofficial historian of the 1,195-room Westin and is proud of the role the property has played in world events.
Clark has served on the Executive Board of Directors for the Hotel Council of San Francisco, the San Francisco Travel Tourism Improvement District Board and as Chairman of the Board for the San Mateo County/Silicon Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau. His face lights up over the tea table when talking about the important developments that have led to this point.
The original Westin footprint was built by railroad magnate Charles Crocker in a bid to create “The Paris of the West.”
Before the hotel’s second anniversary, the earthquake of 1906 demolished 29,000 buildings in San Francisco, whose flag bears the image of a Phoenix rising from the ashes. While the hotel withstood the earthquake, the subsequent fire took its toll. In 40 days, Crocker built “The Little St. Francis,” a 150-room hotel and restaurant for people who were displaced. When the actual hotel reopened in 1907, it was built a third larger, and a Viennese magnetic clock was brought in as the standard that ran timepieces in all the guest rooms.
In addition to the opulent details of the building, Crocker brought in arguably one of the first celebrity chefs in Victor Hertzler, the father of California cuisine. He was the knife behind such dishes as Celery Victor, Crab Louis and Chicken Tetrazzini, and the original cookbook is in the museum to prove it.
The hospitality legacy of the property lives on in employees who have served decades, if not their entire careers, at the hotel or in the area. When you see a bellman with 40 years of experience, you just have to marvel at how many pieces of luggage he has handled and how many stories he has heard.
The location on Union Square, with proximity to the holiday tree, ice skating rink and tulip activations, makes it a nostalgic favorite. San Francisco Flower Market dates back to 1921, and The Westin riffed on the connection with flower-arranging experiences and a Blossom Suite that turned a guest room into a pink wonderland with two trees and countless petals.
“We have been part of the fabric of this community for 121 years,” said Clancy. With the addition of a spacious new club lounge and celebrity bar restaurant, the property will continue to welcome groups in style for decades to come.
