Convention Center Hotels: Where to Stay for Trade Shows (2026 Guide)

Pick the building, not the convention center

Everyone books a convention hotel the same way: search the venue name, sort by distance, take the closest. At three of the four centers we cover, that is the wrong method — and it produces a hotel that is close to the campus but a long indoor walk from the hall you will actually be in.

The Orange County Convention Center has three concourses at three different addresses. McCormick Place has separate North, South, West and Lakeside buildings with long hall-to-hall walks. The Las Vegas Convention Center covers roughly 200 acres and colour-codes its lots by hall. At all three, which building your show is in matters more than how many miles your hotel is from the main entrance.

So before you search for a hotel, find your hall. Then use this page to find the hotel connected to it.

Compare the four centers

McCormick Place: the strongest skybridge network

McCormick Place is the largest convention center in North America, and it has the best indoor-connection options of the four. All five of our top picks are skybridge-connected: the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place to the North Building, the Marriott Marquis Chicago, the Hilton Garden Inn and Hampton Inn to the West Building, and Home2 Suites.

Between October and March, that indoor route matters as much as distance. A hotel 200 metres away across open ground in a Chicago January is further, in practice, than a skybridge hotel twice the distance.

If rates near the venue spike — and during RSNA or Pack Expo they will — downtown is a genuine alternative. The Metra Electric station sits inside the Grand Concourse in McCormick Place South, and Choose Chicago describes the ride from downtown as about seven minutes. The CTA Green Line stops at Cermak–McCormick Place, roughly a seven-minute walk to McCormick Place West, and buses 3, 4 and 21 serve the area.

Parking is event-priced rather than fixed. For Pack Expo 2026 the organiser listed a flat $18 daily rate at Lot B, with Lots A and C at $27–40 depending on duration. Pack Expo also warns that most lots fill by 9am without a prepaid reservation. One more caution: show shuttles, where they exist, usually serve official hotels only.

Dates: PACK EXPO International 18–21 October 2026, RSNA Annual Meeting 29 November–3 December 2026, National Restaurant Association Show 22–25 May 2027.

Orange County Convention Center: check your concourse first

The OCCC has five pedestrian bridges, and per the center itself the connected hotels are the Rosen Plaza, Rosen Centre, Hyatt Regency Orlando and Hilton Orlando. The Rosen Centre has a covered skywalk to the West Building. Four Points by Sheraton is about a five-minute walk but not bridge-connected.

The campus is split across three addresses that are a long way apart:

• West Concourse — 9800 International Drive
• North Concourse — 9400 Universal Boulevard
• South Concourse — 9899 International Drive

If your show is at the North/South Concourse near Universal Boulevard, a hotel bridged to the West Building does not help you. IAAPA Expo, for example, runs 16–20 November 2026 at the North/South Concourse.

There is a trap specific to Orlando: a hotel can be close to the theme parks and nowhere near the convention center. International Drive is long. Always check the hotel address against your concourse address, not against “Orlando.”

Parking is $20 plus tax for standard vehicles, cashless, with no overnight parking, prepaid through the official portal, across three locations — the West Building lot, the North-South Building lot (enter from Universal Boulevard) and the Destination Parkway Garage two blocks west. The I-Ride Trolley stops in front of the West building and the North/South buildings, LYNX buses connect to MCO and downtown, and free pedicabs run on campus with tips customary. MCO is about 12 miles away.

Las Vegas Convention Center: the Loop changes the maths

The LVCC covers around 200 acres, which means walking between halls can take a long time — planning your route inside the campus matters as much as the trip from your hotel.

The Vegas Loop serves several LVCC campus stations including Central, West and South, and travel between campus stations is free. Rules for rides starting or ending off campus vary by show. Loop-connected hotels include Resorts World, Westgate, Fontainebleau and Encore. The Las Vegas Monorail also has a convention center station, and the Westgate sits next door with both a Monorail and a Loop station.

Our pick is the Renaissance Las Vegas, about a four-minute walk — a quiet non-casino hotel, which during a long show week is worth more than it sounds.

Parking at the LVCC is limited and first-come, first-served, with lots colour-coded by hall (Diamond, Silver, Blue, Bronze) and no published rate. For mega-events including CES, public attendee parking can be restricted entirely.

CES 2027 runs 6–9 January 2027, and rates across the Strip and Paradise Road rise sharply that week. One timing note that applies to every big LVCC show: Loop lines and rideshare queues are longest immediately after the show closes, so either leave early or wait it out.

Javits Center: no skybridge, but the best transit

The Javits Center is the one center here with no hotel connection at all. It sits at 655 West 34th Street on Manhattan’s Far West Side, next to Hudson Yards, spanning several blocks along 11th Avenue. The Equinox Hotel New York is about a four-minute walk and is our pick; Hudson Yards and Midtown West hotels are generally 5–10 minutes.

What it lacks in bridges it makes up for in access. The 7 train stops at 34 St–Hudson Yards, the closest station. Penn Station — A/C/E, 1/2/3, LIRR, Amtrak and NJ Transit — is a 10–15 minute walk west or a short bus. Grand Central connects via the 7 train or the M42 crosstown, which runs 24 hours. Taxi and rideshare drop-off is at 38th Street and 11th Avenue, and there is a Citi Bike station at 34th and 11th.

The detail worth knowing: the NY Waterway ferry from New Jersey lands about a block from the center, and can be quicker than the train if you are staying across the Hudson — which is also where the rates are lower during a big show.

Javits publishes no parking rates. The center says there is off-site parking within walking distance, and NYC Tourism lists garages at 501 W. 41st (24 hours), 515 W. 36th, 407 W. 39th, 350 W. 37th and 350 W. 42nd. Rates are not published consistently, so book through a parking app or confirm on arrival.

Dates: NRF Retail’s Big Show 10–12 January 2027, New York Boat Show 20–24 January, NY NOW 31 January–2 February, Toy Fair 20–23 February, New York International Auto Show 26 March–4 April 2027.

Booking a convention hotel: what is different

Show-week hotel booking has its own rules, and none of them are the ones that work for leisure travel.

The official block is not always the best rate, but it is usually the best terms. Room blocks typically carry flexible cancellation and sometimes include the show shuttle — and at McCormick Place, show shuttles serve official hotels only. Booking outside the block to save a little can cost you the ride.

Book the week the show dates are published, not when registration opens. The gap between those two moments is where the connected hotels sell out. At the four centers here, the bridge-connected and Loop-connected properties go first and do not come back.

Price the full day, not the room. At the OCCC, $20 plus tax a day for parking across a four-day show is roughly $85 before you have paid for anything else. At McCormick Place a lot at $27–40 a day is substantially more. A connected hotel at a higher nightly rate with no parking is frequently cheaper in total, and always shorter.

Watch for overlapping events. Big-city convention centers rarely run one show at a time, and a second event in the same week moves rates across the whole district. Las Vegas in January is the clearest case: CES sets the price for everything on Paradise Road and the Strip whether or not you are attending it.

Which city is hardest to book

Ranked by how much planning each one demands:

1. Las Vegas during CES — the whole city reprices, attendee parking can be restricted entirely, and the Loop queues at closing time are a known bottleneck. Book the moment dates are out.
2. Chicago during RSNA or Pack Expo — the skybridge hotels are a small, fixed supply against a very large show, and winter makes the indoor route genuinely valuable rather than a nice-to-have.
3. Orlando during IAAPA — not because supply is tight, but because the three-concourse layout means a wrong booking is a long daily walk you cannot undo.
4. New York — paradoxically the most forgiving, because Manhattan’s hotel supply dwarfs any single show and the transit links mean almost anywhere in Midtown works. The ferry from New Jersey widens that further.

How we put this together

Every figure comes from one of our four center guides, which take parking rates, connected-hotel lists and transit details from each center’s own published information, plus show organisers’ pages where the center does not publish a rate. Where parking is event-priced — as at McCormick Place — we cite the specific show rather than present it as a standing rate.

Room rates appear nowhere on this site. During a major show they behave like event pricing, not hotel pricing. We earn a commission if you book through our links, at no extra cost to you, and it never changes our recommendations. See our affiliate disclosure.