Coronavirus Update: Salesforce Cancels Its Annual Dreamforce Conference For 2020
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- San Francisco's tourist and convention industry has been dealt another major blow due to the coronavirus outbreak as Saleforce has cancelled plans to hold its massive Dreamforce conference this year.
The event annually brings some 170,000 attendees to the city and has generated more than $150 million in annual spending for the local economy.
"As the COVID-19 situation continues to evolve, our first priority is to help ensure the health and safety of our customers, partners, employees and communities," the company posted on its Twitter page. "With this in mind, we have decided to reimagine our events through the end of the year in new and virtual ways. This will be true for all events, including Dreamforce, Tableau Conference 2020, Tableau Conference Europe, TrailheaDX India and our World Tours."
Salesforce officials said they would be releasing information on how they play to refunding the money spent on passes to this year's event.
"We're working on exciting plans to reimagine our events bringing all of the fun, innovation, and learning to our dedicated community of Trailblazers. We'll share more as soon as we can," the company tweeted.
Since the early days of the outbreak in February, nearly a dozen major conferences and events planned for San Francisco this year have been cancelled or moved online.
Organizers for San Francisco's annual Pride celebration called off the 2020 Pride Parade that annually brings nearly 1 million people to San Francisco for the weekend celebration.
Meanwhile, Google cancelled its Cloud Next conference that was scheduled for early April at the Moscone Center and Facebook was forced to called off its Global Marketing Summit that would have brought thousands of attendees to the city in March.
