03-05-07 Special Called Joint Meeting of the La Porte Development Corporation Board of Directors and the La Porte City Council Minutes

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AREA OVERVIEW II -10 CONVENTION CENTER The City of Houston operates the George R. Brown Convention Center, which completed a major expansion in January 2004. The expanded center now offers seven exhibit halls with a total of 871,520 square feet. At the same time, the 1,203-room Hilton Americas Hotel opened, adjacent to and connected by crosswalks to the Convention Center. The hotel serves primarily as a headquarters hotel to the Convention Center and this has enabled the Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB) to aggressively market Houston as a major convention destination. These expanded facilities will continue to allow the Houston CVB to attract more conventions and also some larger conventions that would not have considered Houston in the past. The following table shows the historic growth in convention bookings. Room nights booked decreased in 2002 and 2003 due to the effects of 9/11 on travel and convention activity. Historical George R. Brown Convention Center Bookings 166,466 188,425 134,730 121,777 229,854 221,421 224,019 13.2% -28.5% -15.3% 88.7% -3.7% 1.2% 3,871 4,596 4,2tO 4,199 4,597 3,630 3,500 18.7% -8.4% -0.3% 9.5% -21.0% -3.6% Source: George R. Brown Convention Center During the 2004 fiscal year, there was an 88.7% increase in room nights booked. This is primarily attributed to two major factors, The increased capacity afforded by the completion of the headquarters hotel and expanded convention center allowed for more and larger groups. Also, two events in particular drew significant room nights and national attention that year. Houston hosted the Super Bowl in 2004 and the George R. Brown Convention Center hosted a related event called the NFL Experience. This was a consumer trade show open to the public and it generated attendance of 118,203 and 75,000 room nights. The Major League Baseball All-Star event was also held at the George R. Brown in 2004. It generated 80,000 in attendance and 10,717 related room nights.