[PaulHoule]

It's tough.

I think some people get sent to conferences for the wrong reasons: the company has some money for some reason so they send them.

Other people should go but they can't get the money.

Many times the companies that get booths and sponsor the conference press a lot of flesh and get a lot of business cards but no sales. Sometimes you will see a conference sponsor smiling afterwards, but often they end up spending the last day doing a seminar on some product to a bunch of tired defense contractors who flew across the country to read stuff on their laptops -- if you get in free as a speaker it is probably worth the airfare to commiserate about it with the head of marketing for the sponsor afterwards in the hotel bar.

A nearby city has been thinking about building a conference center, consultants are telling them that most conference centers don't make a profit. Many cities subsidize them because they hope that it will bring in more traffic to other businesses in the area.

However, with conferences being as expensive as they are, I wonder how it is they don't make a profit? Who does?

[bluGill]

Don't confuse the conference center for the conferences inside. The conferences can make money (though they often don't) while the center loses money. Either because they can't book enough, or because there is enough competition that you have to lower prices.

Remember that there are only so many businesses (including non-profits) in town that want to rent the place. When people are coming from out of town what difference does the town make? Thus it is hard to fill your conference center.

[Retric]

It’s the same issue as sports stadiums, once local governments frequently subsidies something it stops being a competitive market with healthy profit margins.