The selection of Chicago as the host city for next summer’s Democratic National Convention is likely to be music to the ears of the city’s retailers, hoteliers and convention planners, who are still struggling to make a full recovery after the pandemic made hybrid schedules and work-from-home the new norm.
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The city beat out finalists Atlanta and New York to host the August 2024 event, with President Joe Biden calling Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker early Tuesday morning to alert him of the selection. The four-day political jamboree is expected to attract 50,000 people, packing hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues and generating about $200M for the city’s economy, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The win for the city is somewhat symbolic, as Chicago regularly hosts larger conventions, including the biennial International Manufacturing Technology Show, which averages about 130,000 visitors, per the Tribune. But the shot in the arm is important for the hotel and convention industries.
"We expect a full recovery in 2026 to pre-pandemic occupancy," Michael Jacobson, president and CEO of the Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association, told the Tribune. "If we keep getting wins like we got today, that might be accelerated."
The convention is also likely to be a boon for downtown restaurants, which have seen profits eaten away by a persistently slow return to offices. Downtown office occupancy remains about half of what it was pre-pandemic, and a number of operators have lamented missing the traffic that comes from large conventions, Crain’s Chicago Business reported.
"We still need to get our conventions back to pre-pandemic numbers," Illinois Restaurant Association President and CEO Sam Toia told Crain’s. "This definitely helps restaurants because that's putting a lot of people in hotels, which then people in hotels want to go to our great restaurant scene."
Hotel bookings tied to regular business travel remain at 75% of pre-pandemic levels, per CoStar, while convention attendance in 2022 was at just over 80% compared to before the pandemic, Crain's reported.
Chicago is reportedly offering the United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks, as the convention’s primary location. That same venue hosted the 1996 convention, which saw Democrats renominate then-President Bill Clinton.
Chicago was also home to the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention, which, months after the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, devolved into violent clashes between protesters and police outside the convention hall.
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