During its Annual Meeting Feb. 25 at the Minneapolis Convention Center, Meet Minneapolis reported 2025 performance results, significant progress on long-term strategy, and major investments designed to strengthen the city’s visitor economy. Amid recent challenges that have required care and collective resolve, the organization emphasized its continued focus on securing future meetings, conventions, and events, which support more than 31,000 tourism and hospitality workers and delivers meaningful economic impact for the city. Meet Minneapolis also emphasized supporting the city’s many locally owned businesses.
Meet Minneapolis Key 2025 Performance Indicators
- Future Group Hotel Room Nights Booked: 532,100
- Third consecutive year with more than 525,000 future rooms booked
- Minneapolis Lodging Taxes: $11.6 million
- Second consecutive year with more than $11 million generated
- Minneapolis Convention Center Revenue Generated: $19.6 million
- Third consecutive year with more than $18 million generated
- Partnership Businesses: 493
- 86 new partner businesses were added in 2025
Tourism in Minneapolis directly supports hundreds of businesses and tens of thousands of worker— individuals whose livelihoods are built on the city’s ability to attract visitors and events. Last year, Meet Minneapolis and its partners:
- Brought more than 650 events to the city and region
- Welcomed nearly 660,000 people to the Minneapolis Convention Center
- Filled more than two million hotel rooms for the second consecutive year
“We are seeing the results of strong collaboration across our tourism and hospitality community,” says Melvin Tennant, president and CEO of Meet Minneapolis, in a prepared statement. “Tourism is an economic engine for Minneapolis. Every meeting we book, every convention we host, and every event we attract sustains jobs and the city’s businesses and generates critical tax revenue. Our focus is clear: increase visitation, support workers, and keep Minneapolis competitive in an evolving meetings and travel landscape.”
Launch of Minneapolis Tourism Improvement District
In June of last year, the city’s hotel community and city leadership, in partnership with Meet Minneapolis, established the Minneapolis Tourism Improvement District (MTID). The MTID is expected to generate approximately $7 million annually to support destination marketing, sales, and event recruitment. In its first year, the MTID helped secure the Savannah Bananas for a high-profile Minneapolis stop at Target Field and launched Winterapolis 2025-26, a targeted campaign designed to drive hotel room nights during the city’s slowest tourism season. This early momentum demonstrates how industry-led investment is strengthening the city’s ability to compete for meetings, conventions, and major events, while accelerating long-term growth.
Minneapolis as the #1 City for Women’s Sports
Meet Minneapolis advanced a key priority from Destination Minneapolis: Charting the Future of Minneapolis Tourism, the city’s long-range tourism master plan aligning public, private, and civic sectors around a shared vision. Last October, the organization launched the “Minneapolis: The #1 City for Women’s Sports” initiative, positioning the city as the leading U.S. destination for women’s sports based on decades of championship hosting, participation at all levels, and competitive success. The initiative included a public announcement, a dedicated digital hub, a co-authored op-ed with Minnesota Sports and Events, and a stakeholder launch event.
Meet Minneapolis’ Key Future Bookings
Meet Minneapolis secured more than 300 future events and conventions for this year. Select future bookings:
- American Choral Directors Association National Conference (March 2027)
- United Methodist Church General Conference (May 2028)
- Northern Lights Junior Volleyball Qualifier (March 2029 and 2030)
- American Association of Immunologists Annual Meeting (May 2031)
- American Political Science Association Annual Meeting & Exhibition (August 2031)
Marketing Agency Search
Meet Minneapolis also issued a request for proposal (RFP) to select a marketing agency of Record to lead a large-scale brand campaign launching this year. Supported by funding from the MTID, this effort represents a long-term investment in building a unified brand- and demand-marketing platform designed to inspire travel, attract meetings and conventions, and cultivate more ambassadors for Minneapolis. The RFP process is currently underway, with an agency partner expected to be selected later this spring.
Other 2025 Highlights
- Community Events Assistance Program: The Minneapolis Community Events Assistance Program launched in 2025. Minneapolis CEAP supports Minneapolis-based nonprofit organizations with financial assistance to help cover city-mandated service costs for community-driven events that support community engagement, cultural diversity, and the promotion of public events that enrich the lives of its residents and visitors. Last year, 23 events were supported, which attracted a combined one million attendees.
- America’s Winter City: Winterapolis continued to serve as Meet Minneapolis’ signature winter leisure campaign in 2025, positioning Minneapolis as an inviting, active, and culturally rich winter destination. The campaign was also adopted and amplified by a range of area partners, extending the reach of the messaging and reinforcing Winterapolis as a shared platform for celebrating and promoting winter experiences across the city.
- Cultural Districts Tourism: To highlight the city’s designated Cultural Districts, Meet Minneapolis expanded this work through the “Get Drawn In” campaign, a multichannel awareness effort designed to spotlight the businesses, cultures, and creative energy within each district. Across all tactics, the campaign delivered 3.2 million impressions and 27,600 clicks, reinforcing awareness of the districts and their role in strengthening Minneapolis neighborhoods.
- Digital Engagement: The Meet Minneapolis website (minneapolis.org) drew nearly three million sessions. There were also more than one million outbound clicks to partner websites. Social media channels generated more than 38 million impressions last year, and followers grew to more than 242,000 across all channels.
To access the 2025 Meet Minneapolis Annual Impact Report, please go here.
To address the challenges that Minneapolis has faced in the past few months, Meet Minneapolis launched the MPLS for MPLS marketing initiative to remind the community and visitors of ways they can help support our local businesses and neighborhoods. More recently, the Go. Gift. Give. campaign was unveiled to encourage people outside Minneapolis (within driving distance) to support the city by coming in, buying gift cards, and showing up for locally owned businesses.
