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Golden 1 Center, Farm-To-Fork Make Selling Sacramento Easier For Visitors Bureau

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — The changing face of Sacramento is more than just the new Golden 1 Center sparking a comeback—other pieces are falling into place for the agency in charge of attracting visitors to the capital city.

No one is happier about the changes in Sacramento than the chief operating officer for the Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau.

"I think there's a couple of things playing in Sacramento's favor," said Mike Testa.

His jobs of attracting conventions and filling hotel space have been made a whole lot easier by the promise of a new downtown arena set to open in Fall 2016, as well as events like last month's sold-out Farm to Fork event on the Tower Bridge.

"You talk to folks outside of Sacramento which we do often in our business–we're on people's radar in ways that we just never were before," he said.

Sacramento lured the International Food Bloggers Conference from Seattle recently. And it's more than just the conference, as the food bloggers have agreed to write stories about the event.

"So you're going to get a ton of media from the attendees—there will be up to 400 bloggers at this conference and if each of them are writing three different stories," he said. "That's incredible publicity for Sacramento."

Sacramento's farm-to-fork commitment was big in attracting the group.

But what else is in the future for the city? Events like Wizard World Comic Con and the California Beer Summit have lived well and prospered at the convention center, but could the city be in position to host a major national political party convention?

"See that one's tough," he said. "The DNC and the RNC consume about 24,000 hotel rooms per night."

In the Sacramento region, there are currently about 15,000 hotel rooms.

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