Gregg Caren, CEO of the Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau, speaks with CMW’s Iain Stirling about bringing PCMA Convening Leaders back to the city for the first time since 2006, why he calls it Philadelphia’s “World Cup” for the meetings industry, and how the city plans to leverage its 250th anniversary celebrations and FIFA World Cup matches to drive convention business for decades to come.
IS: Gregg, it’s great to catch up with you again. I think it’s been about three years since we last spoke, and here we are finally at PCMA Convening Leaders in Philadelphia! You mentioned yesterday that you’ve worked incredibly hard to get to this point. What does bringing PCMA Convening Leaders to Philadelphia actually mean to you and the city?
Gregg Caren: We’re hosting the FIFA World Cup and all these other major global sporting events, but in terms of the bread-and-butter business that drives our tourism economy for Philadelphia, this is our World Cup. I literally started my role at the beginning of COVID, so I knew the impact that was taking place in our hospitality community – 100,000 people out of work. When I applied for the job, I made it my mission to bring this event back to Philadelphia, having last been here in 2006.
Gregg Caren, City Hall
What it means to me is extraordinary. This event comes in during a quieter time for us, but the impact it can have on our future bookings is extraordinary. I think San Diego reported probably close to half a million new room nights booked or anticipated to be booked by having hosted Convening Leaders just a couple of years ago. That’s the impact it can have on a city.
We’re in a business that’s not short term – we’re in a business that talks in terms of decades. We’re booking events now into the mid-2030s. So, for us to have essentially what becomes a familiarisation trip for 4,000 of our closest friends from around the world in the business events industry, it represents a huge opportunity to showcase our venues, our city, and our access. Hopefully that will turn into leads and contracts.
IS: And this is one of PCMA’s largest conferences I believe, which speaks volumes too.
GC: I won’t speak for them, but rumours are murmuring that maybe we’re breaking some records or prior attendance numbers. I think that’s a testament to one of our major benefits – where this venue and city sit on the eastern seaboard, the density of population from Boston to DC, with us sitting right in the middle. Someone asked me earlier today if attendance was looking low because we did a lot of last-minute social media pushes. I said no, attendance was looking strong. But we know we’re in a place where that social media push can affect somebody sitting in an office in New York City, DC, or even Boston, and on a day’s notice, they can decide to register and come to the meeting. That’s a benefit not a lot of other major cities have – less than a day’s notice to get you to where you want to be for a big event.
The District, PCMA Convening Leaders 2026
IS: There’s a strong international presence as well.
GC: Absolutely. Look, as you know, I sit on the PCMA board, and I think we as an association have done a great job of expanding with PCMA EMEA, Latam, and APAC. The association itself has become as global as it wants to be. When I look around the board table, I see people from Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, Mexico, Canada, and the US.
More importantly, when we look at the makeup of the association and that proximity where we sit, we have an extraordinary Philadelphia International Airport which services us both domestically and internationally. While we are a major hub for American Airlines, we may not be their largest hub, but we are their number one transatlantic hub. That means somebody like you can fly here directly from Dublin, and there are probably 14 or 18 other points of entry where Europeans can come straight in. And of course, that’s part of the OneWorld Alliance as well, which gives us access to European and Asian markets that a lot of other cities may not have. It’s a big deal for an event like this.
IS: Apart from connectivity, what makes Philly stand out compared to other American cities, especially on the eastern seaboard?
GC: It’s a few things. Number one, we’ve been named as America’s most welcoming city. My first thought when I heard that was it has to do with hospitality and brotherly love. But it’s not – it actually is a testament to who we are as a city, as a people, and as a policy. We truly are the City of Brotherly Love. We truly are a fully embracing city. We have about 95 or 100 nationalities represented within the city of Philadelphia, which means we’ve got culture, we’ve got cuisine. We even had our own club league for soccer, the Philadelphia International Unity Cup, and that club league had 93 countries playing in it – just local club matches put together by our former mayor.
We’re the most walkable city in America, according to USA Today. All these things layer on top of each other. But last and most importantly is the combination of history, culture, and authenticity. You don’t have to look very far to find either a venue for an event that you won’t find anywhere else in the world, or 50 places to go as an attendee during your prized off-hours – to see the place where the Declaration of Independence was signed or where Rocky ran up the steps, or visit the Barnes Foundation for one of the best post-impressionist art exhibits. It’s unbelievable what we’ve got here in this very tight package.
Neil Brownlee, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, Sherrif Karamat & Gregg Caren
IS: And obviously, the US is 250 years old this year. Are there a lot of activations going on this year to celebrate this milestone?
GC: A lot of activations, yes. 250 is young as a pup in the UK, of course, but 250 is a big deal for us. Our mayor has been very intentional about our 250th celebration. This is not just the birthplace of America, but the birthplace of Western democracy. When we talk about the City of Brotherly Love, I used to think years ago that was a slogan by an ad agency, but it truly is the name given by William Penn, from two Greek words – philia and adelphos – which literally translates to brotherly love.
Our mayor, the 100th mayor of Philadelphia and the first woman mayor, said in her first weeks in office that the 250th celebration needs to be felt in every neighbourhood in this city. We’ve got a lot of neighbourhoods, so it’s very intentional for us not just to focus on the historic district or the convention center, but to engage the Gayborhood, Chinatown, Northeast Philadelphia, South Philadelphia where our Sports Complex is – every neighbourhood in the city.
It’s been done in two very intentional ways. One is we’ve got 52 weeks of firsts. There are so many things that were first in Philly, like the first post office, thanks to Ben Franklin. Every week of this year, we’re celebrating a first in America that happened in Philadelphia. In addition to that, this expanded celebration of our national Declaration of Independence – the semi-quincentennial – is targeted towards 4th of July. But that bullseye spreads out for a month and throughout the entire year, celebrating not only our nation, but our city and our people.
IS: You mentioned in the press conference that the medical sector is a key economic sector for Philadelphia – about 40% of your business, is that right?
GC: That’s right. It’s 43-45% medical and academic meetings.
IS: Is it a sector you’re trying to grow further, or are you looking at other vertical markets?
GC: I always say it’s probably less about growing the percentage than baking a bigger pie. We have other sectors we’ve been doing very well with more recently, particularly corporate events. It’s an area we didn’t have as much focus on in the past, and I think part of it is both the expansion of this building with the largest ballroom in the northeast of the US, and our increased hotel package with more four and five-star products has given us a new entrée to the corporate sector as well. So, I don’t necessarily want to make life science and bio a larger percent, but I’d be fine if it was the same percent of a much bigger pie by growing our other sectors.
IS: What are the other sectors that are quite strong?
GC: We have three business development divisions at the convention and visitor’s bureau. One of them is literally dubbed PHL Life Science. It’s headed by Bonnie Grant, who’s an expert in that space, and has an advisory board made up of professors, doctors, nurses, and scientists. That advisory board helps advise us and connect the dots in ways we couldn’t without them. Every one of them, whether a haematologist or other specialist, becomes our contact to go to their association and enlighten them not just about our convention package, but about the university and hospital presence here that can help them with speakers, sponsors, and support.
Then there’s PHL Sports, which has been around for 35-40 years. That’s what’s helped bring us WrestleMania, the FIFA World Cup, the NFL Draft, the PGA Championship. We have the United Soccer Coaches Convention coming in right on the heels of PCMA this week.
The third, and the one that really is truest to the community that represents Philadelphia, is called PHL Diversity. PHL Diversity has two very clear missions. One is to make sure that we go after events that represent the diversity of our city. So, we’ll have events like the National Black MBA Association Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers professionals from different cultures and languages. We have what’s called in the US the Divine Nine – the large Black fraternal organisations. They bring their major events of up to 6,000 people here.
The flip side purpose of PHL Diversity is to make sure that our small and diverse businesses in the city reap the economic rewards of bringing not just those events, but all events in. Small shopkeepers in the Reading Terminal Market, some of them that have been here for five generations, reap the benefit of a big convention coming in and buying their baked goods, ice cream, or fresh poultry while they’re here.
Reading Terminal
IS: I’ve seen quite a few people walking in there over the last couple of days. It’s probably one of the most extraordinary food halls in the world.
GC: All family driven – 80 individual entrepreneurs. It’s an extraordinary asset for our city and for our convention product.
IS: How long has that been around for?
GC: About 120 years. It’s called the Reading Terminal Market because it was literally the terminus of the Reading Railroad. If anybody ever played Monopoly, there are four railroads – Reading is a town more towards Central Pennsylvania, one of the first lines to bring people to commute into Center City in the 1800s and 1900s. This very building we’re in has a section that was the terminus of that railroad. The market was a place for people to buy fresh produce and flowers 100 years ago, the same as they do today. So, it serves as a marketplace for our citizens, but also a great destination for our tourists.
IS: So, this is obviously a big year. How do you top this going forward?
GC: The only way to top it is to make sure that we leverage its importance for every year thereafter. We have so many people for the years leading up to this one who were so focused on 2026 – we needed to remind them that we’re not in an industry that lives for one year. Hotel investors didn’t build their hotel for 2026, they built it for 30, 40, 50 years. So, for us, it’s about leveraging every sector, both on the convention side and – we’re also responsible for global tourism.
When we’ve got the World Cup here, and as you know, we got our first Michelin Guide. So, for us to get those stories out, not only in Europe, but in ASEAN, APAC, and Latin America, and get the stories about all the value of our tourism – we’re going to have extraordinary TV exposure during the World Cup and PGA. It’s our job to leverage that for every one of the sectors we serve for decades to come.
IS: Have you seen an increase in certain destinations showing more of an interest in coming into Philly?
GC: Without question. Look, we’ve all been coming back post-COVID and there are economic challenges in some countries, but now that we have the countries announced for who’s playing where, we’re very excited. We’re sorry we don’t have England or Scotland, but we’ve got France playing here, we’ve got Brazil playing here, we’ve got Ivory Coast and Haiti. We’re going to have some great matches here.
And then, as things get narrowed down, we’re not shy about the fact that we’re thrilled that the final match is in New York, or North Jersey technically, because for Europeans and Asians that are coming here, rail is the way to go, right? Train is the way to move around Europe and Asia. We’re literally just about an hour to go from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia to Newark, New Jersey Penn Station, which is just 15 minutes by car or Uber to get to MetLife Stadium. So, we’re very happy to be a spoke from New York for the final match and all their matches as well.
FIFA Club World Cup, Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia
IS: Are you hosting a semi-final?
GC: No, so the big gift that FIFA gave us is, there will only be two matches in America on the 4th of July. One in Houston to have something out west and the other with us. We only qualified up to a quarterfinal based on our infrastructure. But when FIFA selected Philadelphia, posting the world’s game in America’s birthplace on America’s birthday, that was very significant to me – very intentional. I think FIFA saw that as big and important to us as even a quarterfinal, because the eyes of the world will truly be here. There’ll be no other matches going on that day. So, I think it’s going to be very powerful to see the pomp and circumstance that will surround that match on that day.
IS: What an occasion. And as it’s a Round of 16 match, it is bound to feature a top seeded team.
GC: Exactly. One step prior to the quarters.
IS: Well, congratulations once again on bringing this event here. It’s finally here, and I’m wishing you all the success after this and going forward – continuing to put Philly on the map globally.
GC: I’d love to see your readers, friends, and family come back many times. It’s been a pleasure.
Rocky Balboa statue, Philadelphia Museum of Art
