The San Francisco CVB and Moscone Center Unveil Virtual Tour
Meeting professionals can now explore San Francisco's Moscone Center ... without visiting Moscone Ce
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, September 9, 2009 - To help planners save time and money in making an initial assessment of San Francisco as a possible meeting destination, the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau (SFCVB) and Moscone Center have unveiled a new virtual tour of Moscone Center, Northern California's premier convention and meeting venues. The easy-to-navigate virtual tour may be viewed on the Meeting Planners section of the SFCVB's website at www.sfcvb.org/convention/tour.
The interactive tour provides visitors with the ability to take in 360-degree views of Moscone Center's three major buildings, as well as navigate from one meeting room to the next, view photo galleries of different space usage, and download capacity information.
"Most meeting professionals know that San Francisco is a great draw for conventions, conferences and trade shows, but not everyone knows if our convention facilities are the right fit for their needs," said Leonard Hoops, executive vice president and chief customer officer for the SFCVB. "Planners are among the busiest people on the planet, so we developed a virtual tour so that they could thoroughly explore our facilities from the comfort of their office or home. And if they like what they see then we anticipate they will include us in an RFP or plan an in-person site inspection."
Not only is the new virtual tour a time-saver for meeting professionals, it is cleaner, greener way for the San Francisco to promote its convention facilities. Moscone Center is already one of the greenest venues of its kind in America, and in 2009 the facility received the prestigious Environmental Achievement Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"Offering a virtual tour can eliminate upward of 40 percent of printing and warehousing costs associated with traditional materials to market and promote the meeting space," said Dick Shaff, vice president/general manager of Moscone Center. "It's one more thing we felt we could do to green our destination."
San Francisco's hotel community has also been a supporter of the new virtual tour, with the San Francisco Hotel Council partnering with the SFCVB and Moscone Center to provide funding to develop the tour. The tour was produced by New Media Gateway, a marketing technology company known for their work with destination marketing organizations.
Moscone Center is San Francisco's largest convention and meeting space. The three buildings - Moscone South, Moscone North, and Moscone West - cover more than 20 acres on three adjacent blocks with over 2 million square feet of building area. Combined, the three buildings consist of over 740,000 square feet of exhibit space, more than 100 meeting rooms, and as many as four ballrooms.
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