SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — As many as 9,500 are in San Francisco for the 44th annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.
It is considered to be the “Super Bowl” of the biotech industry.
Industry leaders, investors, and tech creators–they’re all packing into ballrooms and hotel rooms.
The Westin St. Francis Hotel is once again the headquarters for the conference.
Conferencegoers have taken over Union Square and are all over the city.
“People are excited about San Francisco. It’s a new time. It’s a new era. They are buzzing about this new momentum,” said Marisa Rodriguez, CEO of the Union Square Alliance.
This year, an additional 1,000 people have registered for the conference.
Hotel rates have pushed past $1,000 a night at places in and around Union Square.
“It’s into four digits-for the room rates at most of the hotels,” said Clifton Clark, General Manager of the Westin St. Francis Hotel and Area General Manager for Marriott managed hotels.
He went onto say, “We are at 100% occupancy this week.”
“Most of the rooms in the entire city and county of SF are totally sold out today, tomorrow and all the way to Thursday,” said Alex Bastian, President and CEO of Hotel Council of San Francisco. “We have over 12,000 hotel rooms in Union Square. But again, the 30,000 rooms in their totality are going to be full. IT’s great for Fisherman’s Wharf; It’s great for the Embarcadero, the Yerba Buena, and Union Square.”
That’s good news for our hotels, restaurants, and small businesses.
City and business leaders estimate this conference will generate $105 to $110 million for our local economy.
“For every $100 spent in the hotels, roughly $250 is spent outside of the hotel so that’s great for our restaurants, coffeeshops, neighborhoods,” said Bastian.
Jingya Zhang from Shanghai is back at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference for the fourth time.
“We’re here to talk to our potential partners and our investors,” said Zhang.
She has noticed a big difference in San Francisco.
“It’s much cleaner especially in this downtown area. We can see a vast improvement here,” said Zhang.
The mayor of San Francisco says things are in full swing for the city —with cleaner streets, less crime, and the economy — going up.
“Today San Francisco is moving in the right direction. It’s time now to step on the accelerator,” said Mayor Daniel Lurie. “San Francisco has been a place where breakthroughs happen in health care, in tech, in solving problems others don’t want to take on. This past year we started proving again we can match it’s legacy with results.”
The hope is that the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference will be the first of many successes for 2026.
SFPD has ramped up security around union square and surrounding neighborhoods
The J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference wraps up Thursday.
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