Chicago’s status as one of America’s big four convention centre cities means that finding a hotel room there can sometimes prove tricky.

Downtown Chicago’s hotels had an average occupancy rate of 74.1 per cent last year – 3.9 percentage points higher than in 2006 as the city’s popularity continued to grow – compared with 63.4 per cent for the country as a whole, according to Smith Travel Research.

Chicago’s crowning convention glory – the 2.2 million sq ft McCormick Place complex of exhibit halls, with 8,000 parking spaces and 112 meeting rooms – is the biggest in the country. The site will open an additional 61 meeting rooms in July, along with a 103,000 sq ft ballroom – bigger than a football pitch – taking the centre’s total space to 2.6 million sq ft.

Chicago, the eponymous Windy City on the shores of Lake Michigan, boasts the third-biggest population in the United States, with 9.5 million inhabitants in the metropolitan area. It is America’s biggest city for business travel, with more than 14 million people going there on business each year, according to the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau.

For lovers of architecture, it is the home of the skyscraper – of the Sears Tower, America’s tallest building at 527 metres (1,730ft) (or 442 metres, 1,451ft, if measured from floor to roof rather than floor to the top of its antenna) – of the “Chicago school”, the Wrigley Building, Tribune Tower and of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School. For sports lovers, it is the home of the Bears (American football), Cubs, White Sox (both baseball), Blackhawks (ice hockey) and the Bulls, the basketball team lifted by the presence of Michael Jordan in the Eighties and Nineties.

Board figures

— Average US hotel occupancy rate for 2006: 63.4 per cent

— Average downtown Chicago occupancy rate for 2006: 74.1 per cent

US hotel industry, 2006:

— Total revenues: $133.9 billion

— Total room nights sold: 1.038 billion

— Average rate: $97.31

— Downtown Chicago has 128 hotels, with 33,000 rooms. They had revenues of $1.6 billion (excluding extras such as mini-bar income)

Source: Smith Travel Research

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