| Popular Convention Destinations in the US |
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| Friday, 06 October 2006 14:29 |
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Whether you’re planning to hold your next meeting or convention on the beautiful United States East or West coasts, somewhere in between, or perhaps somewhere outside of the U.S. altogether, MeetingsAndConventions.com is the first step in finding your perfect venue. But, what if you have no idea where you’d like to hold your next convention? Well, we can help you with that as well! By keeping you up to date with the latest trends in convention destinations you can be assured that your next meeting will be a trip well-worth your time away from the office. Popular Convention Destinations in the US- According to the International Congress & Convention Association, which each year publishes a ranking of the most popular destinations for international association meetings, the most popular country for conventions is the United States; and it’s really not hard to see why! With destinations ranging from sunny Orlando and Miami, to the lights of Las Vegas and Los Angeles, to the metropolises of the mid and central regions, such as Chicago, Houston, and New Orleans, to the classic and classy Northeastern cities of New York, Boston, Washington D.C, and Baltimore, the U.S definitely offers a wide array of locations to fit any budget or taste. In fact, as reported by William Spain, of CBS.Marketwatch.com, one of the world's leading leisure destinations, Las Vegas, ranked atop the most recent list of North American convention cities, according to Tradeshow Week. Drawn by a multitude of relatively inexpensive, high-quality hotels, convention planners continually turn to Las Vegas when booking large conventions. And thanks to the Nevada desert city's rapidly growing amount of meeting space the conventions are enticed to return year after year. Perhaps that is why Las Vegas continues to strongly hold its place atop Tradeshow Week’s Ten Leading Cities list. Another city that is no stranger to the Tradeshow Week list is New Orleans. Taking into consideration the disaster Hurricane Katrina caused in the ‘Big Easy,’ it is amazing that the city is able to remain a strong contender in the convention market. In November 2006, barely a year after Katrina ripped through the city, New Orleans welcomed 30,000 realtors and guests for the 2006 REALTOR® Conference & Expo, NARdi Gras. The meeting featured more than 200 conference sessions, 651 exhibiting companies, and thousands of real estate professionals from all over the world. At the time of NARdi Gras, the city had already re-opened more than 28,000 rooms and nearly 1,000 restaurants, according to the National Association of Realtors®. New Orleans is definitely a city that knows how to re-build! Yet another city re-building its image in the convention market is a new-comer to the Top Cities list, Boston. According to Gloria Larson and James Rooney of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, Boston re-joined the Tradeshow Week list for the first time in twenty-two years just one year after opening the Boston Convention and Exhibit Center. “This is a great accomplishment,” says Adam Schaffer, publisher of Tradeshow Week, “The trade show business is very competitive and Boston has demonstrated that it remains a world class city and therefore a very important trade show destination.” As well as receiving recognition from Tradeshow Week, Boston’s BCEC was also voted “Best Convention Center in the East” by Meetings East Magazine. A forth city recently seen emerging as a first-class convention city is Houston. With an impressive downtown, newly expanded facilities, and an abundance of leisure activities, look for Houston to soon join the ranks on the Tradeshow Week list. “We finally have the infrastructure in place that we have been looking forward to for so longs,” says Ken Middleton, VP of sales for the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau. “The convention center expansion is complete. The stadiums are built. We’ve added hotels. Downtown’s nightlife has resurged, METRO Rail is running. This is the absolute best time to be in Houston.” Completed in December 2003, a $165 million expansion project virtually doubled the size of the George R. Brown Convention Center to nearly 1.2 million square feet of exhibition, meeting and registration space, in addition to a variety of wireless capabilities. Convention-goers in Houston will appreciate the convenience afforded by the George R. Brown's downtown location. In addition to the headquarters hotel across the street, the Brown is flanked by the new Toyota Center arena to the south and Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros, to the north. Within one mile, visitors will find 15 hotels and more than 5,000 hotel rooms, bringing the total number of hotel rooms in the Greater Houston area to more than 60,000. Also nearby is the city's flourishing Theater District. With the immense funding and improvements Houston has recently seen, it will undoubtedly give Boston some competition for space on the Tradeshow Week list as it quickly becomes a respected convention city. Although surely there are cities who deserve to fight their way onto the Tradeshow Week list, such as Houston, for 2006 the top ten cities included (from 1 to 10): Las Vegas, New York, Toronto (Canada), Chicago, Atlanta, Orlando, Boston, New Orleans, Dallas, and San Diego. |
| Last Updated ( Monday, 09 June 2008 19:40 ) |