Dreamforce 2022 expected to boost San Francisco economy

SAN FRANCISCO - Visitors are flooding into San Francisco ahead of the annual Dreamforce convention. Dreamforce is always one of the city's biggest conventions, and this year is no different. 

All eyes are on the event and the hope is it sends a clear message that San Francisco is open for business.

The area around the Moscone Center has been transformed to welcome the conference. In years' past 171,000 attendees have flooded into San Francisco for the event, but then the pandemic struck. 

Although Dreamforce was back last year, between 1,000 and 1,500 people attended in person. This year will see considerably more visitors. 

"They're going to have over 40,000 people here in San Francisco for Dreamforce, and these people are going to be staying in hotels, going to restaurants shopping, going to attractions and museums it's really the economic jolt that we needed," said Joe D'Alessandro from SF Travel Association.

Alex Bastian from the Hotel Council of San Francisco said the city's hotels are filling up, including the city's largest hotel, the Hilton which is fully occupied. 

"That means that we have a lot more people visiting," said Bastian. "We have restaurants that are going to be full. We have coffee shops that are going to be blossoming. All of us when the city does well on the tourism front."

Tropisueño is just a few blocks away from where Dreamforce will unfold and Sylvia Sopher said the return of 40,000 visitors means the restaurant is booked. That means chefs and waitstaff, vendors and florists all get a boost from the conference. 

"We've booked the restaurant for three days, so that's huge," said Sopher. "A big, big celebration here, as you see here there's a lot of flowers and things being installed here right now, so it's going to be a huge event."

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The city's hospitality industry hopes Dreamforce is signals the beginning of a return of regular large-scale conventions. For now, all eyes in the convention industry are on San Francisco. "When a convention looks at going to a city they want to see how other conventions have performed in that city, how the city's performed," said D'Alessandro. "So, it's really an important piece of our business strategy so to see that these conventions, these big conventions, when they come to San Francisco, go off well."

Dreamforce officially gets underway Tuesday, and runs through Thursday.

Meanwhile, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced $25 million in new grants to support school districts and education non-profits across the country and right here in the Bay Area with schools in Oakland and San Francisco receiving funds.