SALT LAKE CITY — Business and tourism experts are planning now for major disruptions expected when construction begins as early as 2027 to a remodel of the Salt Palace Convention Center.
However, they believe an agreement reached two years ago could help them navigate through the multiyear effort to redesign the convention center as part of a larger sports, entertainment, culture and convention district plan in downtown Salt Lake City.
“Finding creative ways of how we continue to get business in the city without having the full use of the (convention center) is going to be critical,” said Pina Purpero, general manager of Hyatt Regency Salt Lake City and chair of the convention and tourism assessment area convention district committee.
The convention and tourism assessment area, a 2% surcharge on hotel bookings for businesses close to the convention center, will be a crucial tool through that process, she added, as she and Salt Lake County tourism officials presented an update on the program to the Salt Lake City Council on Tuesday.
What is the assessment area?
The Utah Legislature created the assessment area program in 2022. Salt Lake City approved its zone a year later, well before Smith Entertainment Group landed an NHL franchise that sparked a district surrounding the Delta Center and Salt Palace. Money collected goes toward pulling in large events as Salt Lake City seeks to remain competitive with other key Western convention destinations like Denver, Seattle and Anaheim, California.
So far, so good, Visit Salt Lake officials — the county’s tourism wing — reported to the City Council on Tuesday. On average, 71% of the city’s 12,170 hotel rooms across 75 lodging businesses were occupied last year. That exceeded the national rate of 63% in 2024, per the American Hotel and Lodging Association.
Salt Lake hotels netted $471 million in revenue last year, while a little more than a third of all spending in the city came from people visiting the city. The hotels inside the assessment area brought in enough business that $8.3 million was generated for marketing of events and other items that draw people into the city.
“It’s a big economy here,” said Krista Perry, chief brand and experience officer, noting that Salt Lake County tourism generates $6.15 billion in economic impact, which is nearly half of the state’s tourism impact.
The assessment helped fund the city’s Winter Roundup, a downtown skijoring event that brought 20,000 people downtown earlier this year. It also helped bring in 49 events with 519,000 projected attendees, 700,000 room nights and an estimated $275 million in economic impact.
It’s also attracted new events, such as the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology’s annual conference. Salt Lake was able to pry it from Seattle, said Tyson Lybbert, chief sales officer for Visit Salt Lake. Organizers reported that it attracted more than 10,900 attendees, which was huge for the city.
“It was our best revenue-producing week we’ve ever had — better than the NBA All-Star Game,” Lybbert said. “Those are the kinds of wins that have made a huge difference, and are changing the ways the way things are going for our visitor economy.”
Preparing for convention impacts
Of course, big changes are on the horizon for the Salt Palace, and the projected years that it will take to remodel the building appear to already have an impact on conventions. Visit Salt Lake officials said that the available floor space during remodeling — about half of what’s available now — factored in Outdoor Retailer’s announcement this month that it’s relocating to Minnesota.
Despite this, they remain optimistic that they’ll be able to retain key conventions during the multiyear project — or at least bring back big conventions once the construction ends.
The county recently booked a big soccer tournament for next year, Lybbert said. Some regular events, like USA Volleyball’s youth girls national tournament that attracts about 30,000 people, are booked through the construction years.
County officials are planning to split future volleyball tournament events between the Salt Palace and Mountain American Expo Center in Sandy to pull off the event during construction, which may also help spread economic benefits across the county, Kaitlin Eskelson, president and CEO of Visit Salt Lake, explained to KSL.com after the organization’s annual sports tourism conference held last week.
The organization, she added, is also helping convention planners search for alternative meeting sites within the “downtown ethos” in other cases.
“We look at (the COVID-19 pandemic), and we’ve seen what it’s like to not have conventions. That is not good for small business, for the restaurants, etc.,” she said. “So we’re trying to make sure that we’re creating a robust downtown during all of this — to make sure that the restaurants and the retail really thrive. I think we’re going to get there because we’ve got a lot of business on the books.”
That’s where the assessment area could help out. The program has united hotels into focusing on incentives that “will really drive the best business to all of our hotels” by identifying ways to attract more visitors, Purpero said.
Meanwhile, county officials believe the new Salt Palace with two ballrooms will be better for attracting conventions once it’s completed, which could be by the end of 2030 if everything goes as planned. Some of its newest clients can’t wait, as the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology has already booked it for 2032, Lybbert said.
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