Salesforce has hosted not just a simple customer conference, but a huge one done annually. This year, there were over 170,000 reported attendees for Dreamforce, making it one of the biggest tech conferences in the world — big enough that it even closed down some parts of San Francisco, according to the Business Insider.
Normally, the event host will partner with hotels to house their participants, and you can only imagine — with that number of attendees — how busy these guest houses in San Francisco would be. Talking about innovation, Saleforce booked Celebrity Cruises to lodge their guests.
Other than the hotels, the cloud computing company partnered with a giant cruise ship. Apparently, more than 1,100 conference participants booked rooms in the cruise ship rather than the hotel, Fortune reported.
What the Salesforce guests can see from the deck of the ship are the Golden Gate Bridge, Bay Bridge, Alcatraz Island, the Transamerica Pyramid and Coit Tower.
The cruise ship, which was also an extension of Salesforce's trade show, was decorated just like the conference at San Francisco's Moscone Center.
The rooms offered ranged from $250 to $850 per night. The food, though, was not included, so those who would like to eat on-board paid out an extra $30 to $90 each person, per meal, as per the report of SF Gate.
The all-day guest passes were reportedly limited due to capacity regulations, with preferences given to VIPs at private events. Uauthorize sleepovers were prohibited, and visitor passes were good until 1 a.m.
Despite having a casino with slot machines, on-board guests were reportedly not allowed to gamble because of California law.
"It's a neat idea, and it definitely helped with the hotel problem, but it's just been so empty," Theresa Mason, a Honeywell employee from upstate New York said. "They didn't really do the whole cruise ship social thing right."
