[bahro]

Unlike what the headline suggests, and how I'm sure this will be spun, the main reason for this was cost. San Francisco has some of the most expensive hotel inventory in the country.

Perhaps this is related to the very low number of hotel rooms in San Francisco -- 1/3 the number that exist in Atlanta, and 1/2 of the number in Phoenix. San Francisco makes it as hard as possible to add new inventory to this market.

[wahern]

1/3 compared to metro Atlanta. Metro Atlanta is 8,376 square miles, while San Francisco is a mere 49 square miles.

San Francisco is throwing up plenty of hotels. For example, almost 200 new rooms are coming with a new 800-foot tower that has just started construction: https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/new-skyscraper-to-rise-in-ci...

There's a concerted media effort by conservative outlets to paint SF in a bad light. We have plenty of problems; plenty of self-made problems. But outsiders literally conspiring to harangue us says more about them than it does us.

Sources:

* 97,500 rooms in metro Atlanta. https://www.ajc.com/business/metro-atlanta-add-more-than-000...

* 34,000 rooms in San Francisco. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Like-r...

* 8,376 sq mi in Metro Atlanta. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_metropolitan_area

[xemdetia]

I agree that the hotel prices definitely drive people out, but also the general logistics problems, and things to do that aren't a conference are really silly in San Francisco compared to holding it in other more tourist-focused areas like Las Vegas. Las Vegas is capable of holding simultaneous high headcount events, and has the infrastructure to get a large number of tourists around without even batting an eye.

I'd be interested to hear other people's experiences but it feels like most conferences in San Francisco would start to become miserable in hotel price and commuting for people coming from out of town once you start getting to 20,000 or more people.