Chicago is a premier destination for business and leisure travel.
There are countless advantages to holding an event in Chicago including its transportation accessibility and affordability, diverse hotel inventory, superior labor force, and exciting tourism industry.
In addition, Chicago's central location and access to a large drive-in audience provide significant results for meeting planners and exhibitors. Conventions often post dramatic increases in attendee and exhibitor participation when they meet in Chicago.
Other advantages of holding an event in Chicago include:
- Chicago has a strong local audience. Approximately nine million people live in the metropolitan area and can provide an extremely solid local attendance.
- Chicago’s regional audience dominates the Midwest. Within a 300-mile radius of Chicago (300 miles is considered a regional audience--a one day drive) lies one of the most densely populated areas of the country. Consider New York and Los Angeles where half of their region is salt water. As a matter of fact, approximately 46 million people (16% of the U.S. population) live at Chicago’s doorstep.
- Chicago’s national audience is also dominant, because of Chicago's central and convenient location. The city boasts two major airports, O’Hare International and Midway International.
- As North America's only dual hub for commercial air travel, Chicago is within reach of any location in the world.
- In addition, the city lies at the intersection of the busiest interstate highway system in the nation making Chicago easier to get to for a majority of participants than any other place in the nation.
- Chicago is also easily accessible for international attendees. In 2007, O'Hare International Airport had 96,024 international flights representing 12 million international passengers and Midway had 110 international flights.