Come for Work, but Stay and Play in San Jose

SAN JOSE, CA — Some cities have a hard time luring people to conferences: after the seminars, what's to do but go back to the hotel for mediocre food and pay-per-view? San Jose offers an exciting alternative to the conference cattle call, making a stay in town easy to enjoy for visitors, and seamless to organize for conference managers.

The San Jose "Campus"

San Jose has been described as having a "campus feel," since attendees can easily walk to seminars, hotels, restaurants, and attractions including museums and performing arts venues; or in five minutes, they can ride to great shopping at upscale boutiques on Santana Row or Valley Fair mega mall. With so much going on, it's easy to extend a business stay to take in local wineries, theme parks, or a quick trip to the coast. But what makes San Jose feel like the whole city is pulling together for your conference is Team San Jose, Inc. (a community-driven partnership which manages and operates of the San Jose McEnery Convention Center and cultural facilities in downtown). Team San Jose works together with the San Jose Convention & Visitors Bureau, hoteliers, local arts, and organized labor to support successful meetings and conferences in the city. This business model is the only one of its kind, offering onestop shopping for meeting planners. Each planner is assigned an Event Services Manager to facilitate venue logistics, housing, special permits—even customized menus for events.

Start the ball rolling on your next conference at http://sanjose.org/meetings by submitting an RFP online. Get a taste of how you'd like to present your event by perusing some available menus for attendees. Centerplate, the San Jose Convention and Cultural Facilities' exclusive in-house caterer, offers world-class service and cuisine, and superb menus that can be customized to any event. Executive Chef Vincent Lai, formerly with the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong, ensures creations that stand apart from typical convention fare.

It's this integrated service that has 97 percent of surveyed customers saying they would host another event in San Jose. Dan Fenton, president & CEO of the San Jose Convention & Visitors Bureau (SJCVB) and chairman of Team San Jose, puts it this way: "We offer service no one else can because of Team San Jose's community stakeholders- all at the table ensuring a seamless experience for meeting planners. We also go the extra mile, brainstorming with clients on how we can assist them as strategic partners so they can better achieve their overall goals for the meeting."

A Wealth of Meeting Spaces

No doubt the centerpiece of meeting spaces in San Jose is the McEnery Convention Center, but it's supplemented by a variety of other spaces such as the San Jose Civic (a Spanish Mission-style, dual-level auditorium built in 1936 that's ideal for general sessions up to 3,000 attendees); Parkside Hall (adjacent to the San Jose Civic, with 30,000 square of exhibit and general assembly space); South Hall (adjacent to the Convention Center, with 80,000 square feet of column-free space for general sessions, consumer shows, sporting events, or banquets); the Center for Performing Arts (designed by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, and home to the American Musical Theatre; it seats 2,665); California Theatre (built in 1927 as a Fox movie theater, completely renovated and re-opened in 2004 to house Opera San Jose and Symphony Silicon Valley; it seats 1,119 and is still great for showing films to delegates); and the Montgomery Theater (circa 1936, this 523-seat theater is newly renovated).

For today, the Convention Center stands ready to host any size group, sporting 143,000 square feet of column-free exhibit space, with room for 800 10' x 10' booths; a 22,000-square-foot ballroom; as many as 31 meeting rooms with capacities from 50 to 2,400 in theater-style seating; and banquet seating and kitchen facilities for 5,000. And, as one expects of a convention center in the "Capital of Silicon Valley," McEnery Center is wired to deliver the event industry's highest performance and most reliable Local and Global Data Services via its SJCCnet network. Conferences and meetings have access to networked applications like webcasting, cyber cafes, satellite up/down link transmissions, voice and video over IP, and video streaming. Organizers can move in, plug in (with the help of our highly trained techs), and connect the world to their event.

San Jose Hotels and Team San Jose: Joined by a Purpose and a Network

Recognizing the integral part they play in housing and hosting conferences and meetings, the hotels of San Jose work together with Team San Jose and its award-winning Event Services Department to assist groups with registration, housing, off-site event coordinating, marketing, and transportation. Conference managers can quickly check facility information and hotel availability online at www.sanjose.org for grand hotels like The Fairmont San Jose, Hilton San Jose, San Jose Marriott, The Crowne Plaza - San Jose Downtown; boutique hotels like the Art Deco Hotel De Anza, Sainte Claire Hotel or the Renaissance Revival Hotel Montgomery; convenient airport hotels such as the Radisson Plaza Hotel, the Clarion Hotel San Jose Airport, Wyndham San Jose Hotel, Holiday Inn San Jose, and the Doubletree Hotel. Standing slightly further afield is the Dolce Hayes Mansion, a former private estate built in 1905 in Mediterranean Revival-style. The 214-room resort hotel is an oasis for meetings, training programs, teambuilding, and special events. Dolce Hayes Mansion offers more than 33,000 square feet of dedicated meeting space with 22 specially designed and equipped conference rooms, two restaurants, and two lounges for dining and socializing. And San Jose guests needn't fend for themselves when it comes to figuring out entertainment options: San Jose Visitor Information and Concierge Services provide delegates information about the city, and act as a ticket agent for theatre, sporting events and local attractions.

Since meetings rarely end at the doorway of a conference center, SJCCnet extends to surrounding facilities such as the hotel meeting rooms of the San Jose Hilton and the new San Jose Marriott, creating a contiguous network spanning these facilities. Hi-tech conference goers will appreciate system features such as the reliability provided by very high density structured wiring with fiber optic and copper cabling to all locations; the speed of a powerful DS-3 local loop (28 times the speed of a T-1) for Internet access; and a high performance Ethernet (LAN) based on Cisco routing and switching technology.

Getting There

Wreathed by Interstate Highways 280 and 101, and sitting astride State Highways 85 and 87, San Jose is easy to get to from the North, South, and the coastal areas. Both Amtrak and Caltrain make stops in San Jose, and the city is serviced by the VTA lightrail that supplements busses. Travelers love the convenience of Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport, for easy access to San Jose as well as the rest of Silicon Valley and the Coast. Faster to get in and out of than other metro airports, SJC is five minutes from downtown San Jose, with an average "baggage claim-to-cab" time of just five minutes! If you think only a tiny airport can operate that fast, consider this: in 2006, SJC averaged 185 daily departures on 13 airlines providing non-stop service to 31 destinations, and one-stop service to many, many more. Recently SJC added 11 more flights, including to Palm Springs, Raleigh Durham, and JFK. SJC serves nearly 11 million passengers a year, so to enhance comfort and convenience, a $1.5 billion construction project is underway to upgrade and replace terminal facilities at SJC over the next three years. Besides new buildings, customers can expect new concessions and services, state-of-the-art high-speed baggage handling, and a convenient consolidated rental car garage for leisure and business travel.

A special place to meet, as well as stay for a visit, San Jose is many things: a global gateway, a creative community, an entrepreneurial environment, a tech-savvy city, a place of opportunity, and America's most liveable Big City for three years running. Come see San Jose for yourself.

About Team San Jose

Team San Jose's mission is to ensure that San Josè's Convention Center and Cultural Facilities are effectively managed to reduce costs, improve the local economy, and add value for our customers, residents, workers, and businesses within the City of San Jose. Team San Jose's board includes local hoteliers, organized labor, the arts and the Convention & Visitors Bureau.