One + February 2011 - (Page 57)

The event team originally began looking at Atlanta because of its airlift assets, the vastness of its downtown Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC) and the cluster of upscale convention hotels around the GWCC. But because GWCC is a busy and well-established convention center, and the nearby hotels have a steady convention clientele, the logistics of getting into the GWCC on short notice and booking all the necessary hotel rooms just wasn’t working out, Paluscio says. With the help of a local site selection company, she tried GICC—Atlanta’s second-largest convention center. The GICC is located less than a mile from the main terminal at HartsﬁeldJackson Airport and, as of December 2009, connected to that terminal via a two-minute elevated-train ride. In a coincidence that was extremely fortunate for the event, the new, 403-room Atlanta Marriott Gateway Hotel had just opened in August, located next door to the GICC and also connected to it via a walkway. Also adjacent to GICC is the SpringHill Suites at Gateway Center, which opened in December 2009, when the new SkyTrain system that connects the GICC to the airport terminal opened. And even though this cluster of brand-new facilities is what Paluscio calls “a meeting planner’s dream,” both the GICC and the Marriott Gateway were still just beginning to get the word out about their existence at the time the event was held. Consequently, there was availability, and Paluscio was able to do a complete buyout of the Marriott Gateway and get more than enough space at the GICC on the exact dates she needed. Probably the last piece of infrastructure good fortune that made the event work was the fact that the GICC is less than a mile—and connected by a shuttle bus system—from a strong lineup of other convention hotels that offer 8,000 guest rooms and on-property conference centers. By booking rooms in these airport hotels, the event had plenty of upscale rooms to ﬁll the needs of their attendees, Paluscio says, and because all the hotels are within a mile of each other—and of both the airport terminal and the GICC—it was easy and cost efﬁcient to put together a continuous shuttle connecting all the hotels to the GICC. Paluscio says the event staff made the SpringHill Suites at Gateway Center its headquarters, and because of SkyTrain, which connects it to the airport and the airport’s Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority rail station, the staff found itself at the apex of an efﬁcient transit grid that made it easy to get around the city. The “icing on the cake,” according to Paluscio, was her discovery of the Delta Heritage Museum, located in two historic hangars adjacent to the airport, where the Volkswagon group held a big banquet, with attendees seated at tables under the wings and surrounding a Boeing 767. “All of these great assents were absolutely not on my radar screen,” Paluscio said. “But they will be now.” GICC (3) ROWLAND STITELER is a Florida-based writer who last wrote about South Africa for One+. mpiweb.org 57 http://www.mpiweb.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of One + February 2011

One + February 2011
Contents
Energy of Many
Impressions
The Productivity Cloud
Overheard
Agenda
MPIWeb Connect
Thoughts+Leaders
Events for Life
Gateway to the Future
Top Spots
It Was Not Interesting
Irrelevant
The Wrong Words
Up to Snuff
That’s Enough Facebook
Super Foods to the Rescue
Shoring Resources
Jack and Smoke
Accidentally on Purpose
Staying on Top of Tech
The Joy of Work
Plan to Run
Productivity on the Go
Angel of the Favelas
Your Community
Making a Difference
Until We Meet Again
MPI’s 2011 Meeting Guide to Canada
Contents
Banff Centre
Ottawa Tourism
Tourisme Montréal
The Buzz
InterContinental Canada
Caesars Windsor
Vintage Hotels
The Great Green North
Whistler, British Columbia
Meetings and Conventions Calgary
Scotiabank Convention Centre

One + February 2011