AT 11 A.M. ON a Tuesday, the Indiana Convention Center’s sprawling Wabash West Exhibit Hall C bustles with nearly 1,000 people wearing matching lanyards. Industrial hose manufacturers, exhibitors, and executives from around the world wander the trade show floor during the 42nd annual NAHAD—the Association for Hose and Accessories Distribution—meeting and convention. They are checking out table displays of camlock fittings, production crimpers, EZ coil reels, and promotional brochures as far as the eye can see. The gathering technically began days ago with preconference events and meetings in hotel hospitality suites, tee times at Brickyard Crossing Golf Course, and fancy dinners at St. Elmo Steak House as everyone settled into the business of handshaking and networking.
Indianapolis is remarkably good at hosting large-scale gatherings like this, the unglamorous ones (albeit the most fun you can have in a pair of brown dress shoes) as well as the major blowouts like Gen Con, Comic Con, JAMfest Cheer Super Nationals, Indiana Black Expo Summer Celebration, and the Sweets & Snacks Expo sponsored by the National Confectioners Association.
In 2025, the Indiana Convention Center and connected Lucas Oil Stadium alone welcomed 207 events, hosting a total of 1.8 million attendees with an economic impact in the hundreds of millions. Gen Con, the largest and longest-running gaming convention in North America, is believed to account for more than $82 million of that, while the Performance Racing Industry Trade Show brings in around $63 million.
And the conventioneers keep coming. Our landlocked, weather-permitting town placed at the very top of a list of convention city contenders in a 2014 USA Today 10 Best readers’ choice poll that also included Boston; Nashville; Salt Lake City; Atlanta; Denver; New Orleans; Washington, D.C.; Minneapolis; and Chicago, in that order. There is no question that Indianapolis has a special knack for this very specific type of expense-account tourism. The real question is why?
You might tumble down a Reddit rabbit hole in search of an answer. Earlier this year, one online discussion that began with a post titled “Interesting pattern I’ve noticed. ‘convention center theory’ as I call it” sparked a lively debate about whether cities with oversized convention centers are inherently “boring.” The original poster pointed to Indianapolis as Exhibit A: a metro area with just over 2 million people and a convention center footprint (spanning 10 city blocks) that seems almost comically large compared to the size of its downtown.
The poster argued that cities lacking natural beauty or glitzy tourist destinations compensate by luring visitors through trade shows and work conferences. Some commenters agreed. Indianapolis, even on its most radiant day, is no Las Vegas or San Diego. Other Redditers came to the city’s defense, rattling off local highlights like Newfields and the Indianapolis Zoo that make the city far from boring. And then came an acknowledgment of logistical truths: Conventions require airports, hotels, plenty of meeting spaces, a walkable core, and affordability. No brag, but Indianapolis checks all those boxes.
Back at the NAHAD convention, MTO Hose Solutions owner Donald Malizia smiles warmly behind his booth just inside the trade show entrance. “Sometimes, they’ll put you up in a five-star hotel,” says this businessman from Pennsylvania known to some as Teflon Don. This is his 24th NAHAD and his second visit to Indianapolis. “Las Vegas. Miami. If it’s in California, they’ll do it in Palm Springs. People take their families, and they hang out at the pool. Here, there’s no pool. No spa.” But Malizia has had a productive visit, meeting with clients and peers, putting faces to names, surviving a St. Elmo shrimp cocktail. “This …” he says as he gestures toward the rows of industrial displays and the mass of people grouped by their matching polo shirts, “this is where you go to focus on business.”
True to its Midwestern values, Indianapolis has figured out a way to make itself useful. And it continues to build on those marketable qualities. Literally. New luxury hotels, beginning with last year’s debut of the $120 million InterContinental off Monument Circle, are adding posh accommodations for visitors. A Ritz-Carlton will open across from Gainbridge Fieldhouse in 2028. Kimpton Indianapolis is scheduled to open this fall at the corner of Pennsylvania and Washington streets, featuring 167 guestrooms, a 15th-floor ballroom, a full-service restaurant, and a rooftop bar. And the brand-new, 800-room Signia by Hilton, also set to open this year, will tower 38 stories over downtown’s Wholesale District alongside a 143,500-square-foot expansion of the Indiana Convention Center currently under construction. In fact, if you were to gaze out the convention center’s dramatic east-facing entrance right now toward the block-long stretch of Georgia Street that has traditinally been a magnet for convention foot traffic, the view is all hard hats and earthmovers. To the average downtowner, the construction dust might look like a big, messy headache. But to people selling Indianapolis to future conventions—people like Visit Indy executive vice president Chris Gahl—it’s practically a sales pitch. Where we see cranes in the air and sidewalk barricades, they see proof of growth. And maybe a bit of moxie. “It’s incumbent on our group to be able to paint a picture for someone arriving today of what Indianapolis of 2028 will look like,” Gahl says. “We have to be able to share that the Ritz-Carlton Indianapolis will be here, and Georgia Street will be opened, and Circle Centre Mall will be called Traction Yards.”
Gahl explains how the business of recruiting conventions is like a careful courtship. “We have 58 members on the Visit Indy team, and roughly half of us are deployed each and every day to uncover conventions, meetings, trade shows, and events that are looking for host cities.” Next comes the hard work of persuading organizers to give Indianapolis a closer look, presenting detailed proposals and presentations. If there is some interest, planners are flown in for highly orchestrated site visits designed to showcase the city’s greatest strengths: its compact and walkable downtown, connected hotels, climate-controlled skywalks, restaurants, sports venues, and White River State Park.
“We know how to pick up that decision-maker from the airport, what route to drive, what room they’ll check into at which hotel with what view, what seat at each table of each restaurant we would like to dine at,” Gahl says. He estimates that more than 50 percent of the time, that meticulously curated tour gets the negotiations to the next stage. “With Indianapolis,” he says, “seeing is believing.”
The whole process can take up to 10 years and is, of course, interspersed with the maintenance of existing contracts, perhaps working with organizers who no longer want to meet in the city due to safety concerns or the local political climate. “Which happens,” Gahl says. When everything falls into place, the payoff is tremendous. Hotels sell out blocks of rooms months in advance, restaurants run out of reservations, downtown bars do robust business, and tourism dollars trickle over to hotspots like Mass Ave and Fountain Square.
Major assemblies like April’s Fire Department Instructors Conference (FDIC), which Indianapolis has booked through 2028, can temporarily change the entire rhythm of downtown, turning it into a little city within a city. During the weeklong convention, fire and rescue professionals from around the globe descend upon the city’s core. When not attending workshops on everything from lithium battery fires to dealing with active shooters or participating in hands-on training and live reenactments inside Lucas Oil Stadium, attendees like to blow off a little steam at local establishments—especially the ones that have outdoor tables. “We love the city. It’s the best-kept secret, like people don’t know until they go,” says New Jersey–based Eric Schlett, president of Clarion Events Fire & Rescue Group, which provides media, event, and education resources for the fire and emergency medical services industries. “Indianapolis embraces us culturally,” he adds. “The partnership with the city, and particularly [the Indianapolis Fire Department] and [Indianapolies Emergency Medical Services], is fabulous. That’s definitely critical to our wanting to stay there.”
To accommodate events of this size that have so many big moving parts, downtown Indianapolis simply offers the path of least resistance. FDIC relies on a third-party decorator and logistics team to choreograph a parade of hundreds of trucks from major manufacturers like Pierce and REV Group into the convention center and Lucas Oil Stadium. Move-in begins about a week before the convention starts, with the Lucas Oil parking lot used as a queuing area and exhibitors assigned specific times so vehicles can be slotted into place front-to-back like a giant puzzle.
While move-in is tightly organized, move-out is often chaotic as exhibitors rush to leave. Show management and even local police help control the process. “It really is a community effort,” Schlett says. “I like to think that it’s very important for us to be in Indianapolis, and it’s very important for Indianapolis to have us.” He estimates the FDIC convention’s economic impact reaches $50 million over the week.
This month, downtown Indianapolis takes on an equally transformative event as tens of thousands of gamers, cosplayers, and artists sweep into town for Gen Con. Held in Indianapolis since 2003 and contracted to return every year until 2030, it is the largest tabletop gaming convention in North America, drawing around 72,000 attendees. Most noticeably, it brings its own whimsical culture as legions of Stormtroopers and wizards are spotted at crosswalks around the convention center or ordering Gen Con specials at downtown bars and restaurants.
Next month, the 99th National FFA Convention & Expo ushers in a whirlwind of blue corduroy jackets and teenage Future Farmers of America, all moving through a system that’s been refined over the past 15 years that the massive conference has been held in town. Behind the scenes, people like Oregon FFA executive secretary Lee Letsch spend months building detailed schedules and booking group dinners. She says that from her home state alone, hundreds of students fly into Indy for a few packed days of delegate business, competitions, workshops, concerts, and even a rodeo. While some chapters tap into the official housing blocks and vetted hotels, many budget‑minded groups opt for rental houses on the outskirts of the city and drive in each day in vans packed with chaperones.
Once downtown, the students find their way to agriculture-focused workshops and presentations, meals at reliably group‑friendly spots like Weber Grill and Buca di Beppo, and evenings of big‑ticket entertainment, all while wearing FFA’s official dress—zipped-up blue jackets, black slacks or a black skirt with black tights, and black shoes. The youth-focused meetup works largely because Indianapolis is compact, walkable, and, as Letsch notes, practiced at rolling out the red carpet for 73,000 teenagers at once. “You’re putting that many students downtown and telling them, ‘Hey, all of you are going to get lunch at the same time. Figure it out.’ I’ve been in other facilities where that’s not figure-out-able,” Letsch says. “So I really, really appreciate that about Indianapolis.”
One unique selling point (and built-in safety feature) for FFA organizers is downtown’s system of “gerbil tubes” connecting the convention center to Lucas Oil, the surrounding hotels, and other structures. Students can navigate without ever needing a rental car or even an umbrella. In fact, downtown’s 14 enclosed, climate-controlled above-ground walkways are a major selling point to conventioneers traveling to the middle of the country every season of the year, rain or shine, sleet or snow.
The enclosed walkways are a perfect example of how Indianapolis didn’t become a convention powerhouse by accident. It built itself into one over the course of a century. The roots go back to 1923, when a group of civic boosters formed what eventually became Visit Indy and began pitching the city to national organizations. Their sell was simple: The city was central, affordable, and friendly.
That strategy accelerated in the late 1960s with the creation of the Capital Improvement Board, a public entity designed to finance and build the infrastructure that could turn those early ambitions into reality. The opening of the original Indiana Convention Center in 1972, a comparatively modest low-profile building clad in the popular masonry and cast-concrete of the day, marked the true turning point. Indianapolis doubled down with the RCA Dome in 1984, connected hotels, multiple convention center expansions, and the addition of Lucas Oil Stadium, creating a seamless urban landscape that feels and functions more like a college campus.
Behind Indy’s convention success story is a long list of early movers and shakers. Chris Gahl of Visit Indy credits visionaries like the late Bill McGowan, who served as the president and CEO of Visit Indy during the 1980s and worked alongside Indiana Sports Corp, the mayor’s office, and the governor’s office to turn Indianapolis into a convention event destination, as well as business and sports leaders Jim Morris and Jerry Semler and Indiana Supreme Court Justice Ted Boehm, “a fascinating human whose fingerprints are all over Indianapolis,” Gahl says.
They knew then, and we know now, that Indianapolis might not have the sandy beaches or mountain views that bless a place with built-in tourism. But by working with what we have, we have become an annual destination for legions of seminar-attending visitors who might never experience the Circle City if not for gatherings like Gen Con, the Gospel Coalition National Women’s Conference, Herbalife Nutrition Extravaganza, Drum Corps International, Pentecostal Assemblies of the World Summer Convention, MAPP Benchmarking and Best Practices Conference, TechKnowledge Conference & Expo, Gas Machinery Conference, Midwest Healthcare Engineering Conference & Trade Show, Pokémon Indianapolis Regional Championship, and Wound, Ostomy & Continence Nurses Society Annual Conference.
A comedian once joked that a conference center is like a Wikipedia rabbit hole that you can walk through in person.
And sometimes, when we win convention-goers over, it’s nice to see the city through their fresh eyes. “Everything here is so clean! There are so many flowers, and I think the skywalks are the coolest thing ever invented,” says NAHAD conventioneer Nick Gorman of Philadelphia, visiting Indianapolis for the first time. “We went to White River State Park, and what’s so cool about that is how they put the parking garage underground, so you have all of that beautiful landscaping,” he says, almost breathlessly. “I was here for one day, and I told my friends this is the only city I would consider moving to. Before that, it was Boston.”
