One commercial features a man opening his hotel room with a car-door remote control.
"Building attendance and selling hotel rooms is an immediate goal," said Meryl Levitz, president and CEO of GPTMC. "The second is a fundamental goal, and that is the re-imaging for Philadelphia.
"The Auto Show, the Flower Show, and our museums - like the Barnes opening - are destination definers, or could further be developed into destination definers," Levitz said.
The annual Auto Show is the Convention Center's second-largest gate show, after the Philadelphia International Flower Show.
Last year's Auto Show attracted 225,000, said Kevin Mazzucola, head of the auto dealers' group, which owns and produces the event. A larger crowd, about 250,000, is expected this year, he said, because the Convention Center expansion means the show will be about 10 percent bigger, with an extra 50,000 to 60,000 square feet of space.
To make an overnight trip to the show easy, Mazzucola said, people can go to the auto show website and click on the "You auto sleep over" icon for information on rates, packages, and complimentary Auto Show tickets at participating hotels.
"This is to take advantage of those 250,000 people who are considering staying overnight rather than make a day trip," he said.
For its first event since the $786 million expansion of the Convention Center debuted in March, Mazzucola said, the Auto Show will feature four Ride-and-Drives to go for an actual test drive. One of the four will be indoors, something that wasn't possible in the smaller center.
"If you've been to the Philly Auto Show, you've never been to this one," he boasted.
