Monday, Jan. 6, 2025 | 2 a.m.
The tech industry will once again take over the Las Vegas Strip this week, as tens of thousands of attendees flock to CES, the world’s largest gadget show.
The four-day event, which starts Tuesday, draws technology professionals from around the globe to get a sneak peak at the latest advances in consumer electronics.
This year’s convention will showcase innovations in artificial intelligence, digital health, sustainability and the auto industry, officials said.
The show, which also attracts tech investors and media, will include 4,500 exhibitors, including 1,400 startup companies.
While attendance is expected to be down slightly from its 2017 peak of 184,279, some 140,000 people are expected at this year’s show.
Las Vegas has three of the country’s largest conference centers and the expo uses all of them — the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Venetian Expo and Mandalay Bay Convention Center, for a combined 2.5 million square feet of exhibits, organizers said.
The annual show is a boost to the Las Vegas tourist economy, as attendees fill hotel rooms, restaurants and casinos. The direct economic impact in 2020 reached $291 million, though that was months before COVID disrupted the convention industry.
This year, room rates have soared for the opening day of the conference.
As of Thursday, the lowest price for the MGM Grand on Tuesday was $999, 12 times more than the previous day.
At the Venetian, which will host part of the sprawling conference, rooms booked online started at $759 on Tuesday.
“What I think is relevant is how long people stay for the show and what kind of money they bring to Vegas,” said Gary Shapiro, CEO of CES.
He noted that the show brings plenty of international visitors ready to spend.
Last year, the attendance was 138,789, with 40.6% of the crowd coming from outside the United States. In 2020, 35% of the attendance was international.
It’s been a difficult couple of years for trade shows.
The COVID-19 pandemic either moved events online or shut them down, sometimes for good. For example, E3 — the world’s largest video game convention in Los Angeles — was permanently canceled in 2023.
Other shows, including CES, have returned — but with smaller crowds.
In 2020, months before pandemic closures, CES hosted 171,268 attendees and 4,419 exhibiting companies.
Some of that decline is intentional, Shapiro said.
“We have consciously tried to cut down the number of people coming to keep the (hotel) rates lower,” Shapiro said. He later added that “we raised our rates for attendance … intentionally to make sure that there’s a business purpose.”
If anything, he believes things are looking up for CES, which starts in earnest today with media-only events.
The artificial intelligence boom, although potentially hitting a wall, is dominating more and more headlines. Delta’s 100th anniversary keynote is set to christen the Sphere for the trade show circuit.
And while pre-event registration and hotel room bookings can change, Shapiro said CES is “up (from) last year by every measure that we use.”
This year’s event will feature over 300 conference sessions and around 1,100 different speakers.
“There’s a lot the Las Vegas community should be naturally interested in, especially the hotel technology people and CEOs,” he said. “Obviously, we welcome it, but … this is not open to consumers. You must have a business purpose for being there.”
After the pandemic, the tangible impact of convention centers like those in Las Vegas came into question. More recently in November, The New York Times asked in a headline: “Why are cities still spending big on convention centers?”
Steve Hill, the CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, took issue with the article including a photo of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
That “seemed to imply incorrectly … that it doesn’t make sense even here,” Hill told the Sun. “We pay about $120 million a year in bond payments for this building, and the city makes an awful lot more money than $120 million on this convention center.”
Shapiro said CES also gets its money’s worth from Las Vegas. He joked that the convention’s dependence on the city puts him in a less-than-ideal negotiating position.
“We love Las Vegas,” Shapiro said. “It has the best hospitality industry. It has great union workers who are well trained in every aspect that we need, whether it’s electrical or booth construction or Teamsters moving things around.”
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