One of the biggest signs of a great harvest is the fact that Minneapolis set an all-time record for hotel room revenue in June. And the 53,631 hotel rooms occupied from Sunday-Saturday, June 23-29, were the third-most since 2020 (post-pandemic).

The recipe for that record-breaking performance included, among other things, Minneapolis hosting overlapping major events at the end of June. This created the compression needed to drive hotel occupancy and revenue – and, more importantly, keep our tourism and hospitality workers on the job more than they may have been otherwise. What is more remarkable is that our city has more hotel rooms now than at any other point in its history. Currently, there are 10,268 hotel rooms in Minneapolis, which is up more than 17% since the Super Bowl in 2018.

Our community has also welcomed the 2024 GALA Choruses Festival in early July. The multi-day festival, which was cancelled in 2020, had record attendance this year and they are already recommitted to Minneapolis for their 2028 event.

With all the record hotel occupancy and revenue results we have seen this year, our harvest has been plentiful, and we have a lot to be thankful for.

At Meet Minneapolis, we have always known that prospective customers can truly see the possibilities for their own events when they come and see our city for themselves. To capitalize on that, we regularly bring in prospective customers, throughout the year, for detailed and customized site visits.

We can take our game “up a notch” when we invite top prospects during major the events that we are hosting. In the past, host events included the 2014 MLB All-Star Game, the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Final Fours, the WNBA All-Star Game and, of course, the Super Bowl. We can track successes in securing the meetings and events of customers who attended these events as our guests.

With the recent U.S. Gymnastics Olympic Team Trials, our team had nearly 50 customers in town to show off how well our city can host major events. The decision-makers need to envision their own events in our city, and site visits that coincide with major events show how all aspects of our city are activated. We also hosted customers earlier this year with both Big Ten basketball tournaments.

We are confident that the direct evaluation of our city at its very best, by interested and motivated meeting and event decision-makers, will yield a strong future harvest of new meetings and events.

Stay tuned for future crop reports! We are optimistic that the harvest for the rest of this year and next year will be plentiful.