The Courtyard Marriott hotel (background) will bring the available room total near the Convention Center to more than 400 — a goal that District 3 Councilmember Miguel Arias said will help facilitate concerts, meetings, weddings and other events taking place in Downtown Fresno. Photo by Ben Hensley

Once a bustling hub for conventions and conferences, Fresno now faces a dilemma — how to reattract guests to a once-busy and geographically centralized convention and conference destination.

The Fresno Convention Center boasts more than 66,000 square feet of flexible space, ready to accommodate large-scale business conferences, meetings and events. But Fresno District 3 Councilmember Miguel Arias said that the city’s prominence in hosting large-scale events is largely in the past.

“I would argue that 20 years ago it was conventions and conferences,” Arias said. “Those have completely died out.”

In recent years, the shift towards destination-focused events has seen cities like San Diego, San Francisco and Las Vegas move to dominate the convention scene.

“The market took a huge shift towards hosting conventions in destination venues — the weather of San Diego, the scenery of San Francisco…the entertainment of Vegas,” Arias noted. “There hasn’t been really a convention center-type environment in the Valley and in Fresno.”

Despite the challenges facing the convention scene, however, Valley tourism and travel remained largely on par with 2024’s numbers, with March average hotel occupancy for Fresno and Clovis up slightly from 2024 numbers at 62% compared to 60% in 2024.

“We knew there was a lot of uncertainty in the market so 2024 remaining flat was really what we were looking for,” said Lisa Oliviera, president and CEO at Visit Fresno County. “That was something we were very happy with.”

Visit Fresno County is the marketing entity charged with drawing tourism to the county, funded through a tourism business improvement district that includes incorporated cities.

Numbers remaining largely the same from 2024 means good news and bad news for the Valley; the good news: tourists are still seeing Fresno, Clovis and the Central Valley as a largely accessible gateway to many California attractions, national parks and more.

The bad news: the convention scene hasn’t seen a notable buildup when compared to past years, still down from pre-pandemic numbers.

Despite that, Oliviera said that there is plenty of opportunity to grow smaller group conferences and conventions into something more.

“We really thrive in the education conferences,” she said. “They’re a little bit smaller and the hope is that we can grow those into large conventions that come annually.”

She also said that Visit Fresno County continuously works to reach out to conferences and convention leaders that once frequented the Valley, adding that many of these groups are contracted on three-year terms with other venues.

Visit Fresno County continues to pursue those groups, urging them to reexplore the Fresno area as a viable convention space.

The efforts to drive conferences and conventions back to the Valley, however, can only go as far as the available occupancy. That’s set to receive a boost of 144 rooms with the opening of the Courtyard Marriott adjacent to the Convention Center later this year in Downtown Fresno.

Combined with nearby DoubleTree Hotel, the addition of the Courtyard Marriott will drive more than 400 combined rooms to the Downtown Fresno area.

The additional space aims to meet a goal set by the city to serve Convention Center clients, according to Arias.

“What they asked of us was approximately 400 rooms within the metro area of the Convention Center,” he said. “That would be the goal to serve the current clients…not necessarily to attract new conventions, but to serve the existing business profile.”

While traditional conventions face seemingly continuous uphill battles, other draws to the Valley are thriving — particularly youth and amateur sports.

“Summer is all about the sports groups,” Oliviera said. “The majority of the large groups traveling to Fresno have been the athletic groups. Conventions have returned more slowly than those groups due to challenges with room locality and lack of available space to stay.”

May’s calendar alone includes the Mountain West Track and Field Championships at Buchanan High School, PAC West Baseball Championships, CIF Swim & Dive Championships, CIF Track & Field Finals and multiple wrestling tournaments, each of which will drive people to the Valley and stimulate the local economy.

Oliviera also added that one of Visit Fresno County’s biggest selling points also stems from Fresno’s geographic foothold.

“You can be here for a few days and get the ‘real side of California’ experience in an affordable setting,” she said.

Internationally, travel has lagged with anxiety over immigration, financial concerns and uncertainty in reservations and other factors stemming from a reduced National Park Service workforce stemming from President Donald Trump’s substantial budget cuts.

Despite that, Oliviera said that they are still working on attracting guests to the Valley, urging guests to “leave no trace.”

Arias added that, in addition to the nearby national parks — which have always been a large draw to the Central Valley — other nearby attractions generate a significant amount of tourism.

“We’ve kind of always been a path on the way to Yosemite,” Arias said, adding that the Fresno Yosemite International Airport, which drives approximately four million people annually, and the Fresno Chaffee Zoo — attracting roughly one million annual visitors — also serve as major jumping-off points for tourists.