Another big tech company is dealing a blow to San Francisco's commercial real estate market by relocating a multiple-day convention that has delivered a significant economic boost in past years.

Silicon Valley tech giant Alphabet is moving its high-profile Google Cloud Next conference to Las Vegas, the latest loss San Francisco's downtown convention center has suffered in recent years that has resulted in depressed hotel activity and dwindling foot traffic to business properties around the 580,000-square-foot Moscone Center at 701-747 Howard St.

The company confirmed in an emailed statement to CoStar News that the conference, which typically draws thousands of attendees each year, will be held at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas next year, but did not provide a reason explaining the move.

Google's decision to pull the plug on hosting the event in San Francisco follows similar moves made by other tech giants such as Meta and IBM, both of which are planning events in alternative cities such as Denver and Orlando, Florida.

What's more, San Francisco-based Salesforce is on the verge of finding a different home for its annual Dreamforce convention. If relocated, the move would deal a financial blow to the city, which has long benefited from the 40,000-person crowd the conference attracts that stays in hotel rooms, frequents local restaurants and pumps millions of dollars into the local economy.

It is the largest convention for the city, according to the San Francisco Travel Association, but Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently warned that if issues such as homelessness and drug use persist — both of which have been primary factors for the loss of other tech conferences — the Dreamforce 2023 event will be the city's last.

“We’re working hand in hand with the city as we always do," the CEO said. "We’ll bring a significant number of people to the city, and it will generate $57 million in the downtown economy. So it’s in all of our interests for it to go well.”

Salesforce declined to provide additional comments.

The cancellations by Google, Meta, IBM, among others, come as the region, already struggling with a lack of returning office workers and tourists and record-high vacancy rates and other pandemic-related challenges, works to recover. With an office vacancy rate of nearly 30% in San Francisco's financial district, some owners are considering alternative property uses.

Events at the Moscone Center, located at the heart of downtown San Francisco, typically help fill nearby hotel rooms and generate foot traffic for restaurants and retailers, which have suffered amid steep declines in business recently. The city and county of San Francisco own the convention center.

Hotel room bookings are typically an indicator of the health and business travel activity in San Francisco. However, a complicated mix of ongoing remote work trends, low office utilization rates, socioeconomic challenges such as homelessness, and the city's worsening reputation on the global stage has left the Moscone Center struggling to attract the conference business it needs to fully return to pre-pandemic levels of activity.

Throughout the pandemic, San Francisco had among the steepest declines in business travel revenue of any major metropolitan area in the country, according to data from the American Hotel & Lodging Association. Those problems have continued, as more than 2 million hotel room bookings were lost or canceled for 2023 and 2024.

The number of conferences and room nights booked for the year ahead provides only a murky picture as to whether the outlook will improve.

The Moscone Center expects to host 36 conferences this year that will result collectively in about 663,000 hotel room bookings, according to the local travel association. That's significantly higher than the roughly 17,000 rooms booked in 2021. However, only 22 events and 462,000 definite room nights are on the books for next year.

The city's tourism association reported that its convention sales team had booked 16 upcoming events for the Moscone Center, including the 2024 Visa Payments Forum and the 2026 Super Bowl LX & NFL Experience.

The downtown convention center is slated to host 21 events that will result in more than 426,950 hotel room bookings in 2024, a 34% drop compared with 2023, according to a recent San Francisco Travel Association report.

San Francisco's hospitality market "remains one of the least recovered hotel markets in the United States," according to a CoStar report. While hotels post higher daily rate averages, the city is one of the few markets where average daily rate figures have not recovered to 2019 levels.

Negative national press coverage has deterred leisure visitors and convention center events. Also, the city's heavy tech presence has meant corporate travel has been muted. A delay in the return of robust international travel activity has hurt the city's hospitality business, too. A CoStar analysis forecasts that San Francisco's hotel occupancy rates will unlikely recover within the next five years.