Meeting News - November 10, 2008 - (Page S4)

20 Shreveport Monroe Columbia LOUISIANA 49 Natchitoches Alexandria 49 Baton Rouge 12 10 10 Lafayette New Orleans New Iberia 10 Lake Charles New Orleans Promises Meeting Planners Value-Laden ‘Extraordinary Experiences’ Responding to the country’s economic downturn, the New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau has joined with the New Orleans Morial Convention Center to launch Extraordinary Experiences, a turnkey event-planning program offering cost savings and value-added resources to meeting planners. Available through 2011 in select months, the Extraordinary Experiences program is for groups using the 1.1-million-sf Morial Convention Center and at least 1,000 hotel rooms on peak night. In addition to complimentary meeting space—including free general session, food and beverage, exhibit, and breakout rooms—it includes a host of amenities, such as free wireless Internet access, a free refreshment break, and a complimentary site inspection for two, including airfare. Big meetings get big breaks at Morial. Extraordinary Experiences also offers meeting planners free marketing resources and assistance. Senior CVB staff, for instance, will help customize for groups a library of eventspecific marketing collateral. They’ll also attend groups’ events in other cities to promote the upcoming New Orleans gathering, and identify local volunteer opportunities for attendees. Said New Orleans CVB president and CEO J. Stephen Perry, “We understand the economic and ROI pressures that association and corporate meeting professionals are facing, so we want New Orleans to be the highest value proposition of any U.S.destination.” Extraordinary Experiences is part of the New Orleans Commitment, launched in 2007 with the intention of making New Orleans “the most meeting planner-friendly city in America.” Baton Rouge River Center Eyes Expansion Two years after opening on the Mississippi River, the Baton Rouge River Center is preparing for a 30,000-sf expansion of its 70,000-sf exhibition hall. The exhibition hall, which serves as the city’s convention center, will eventually have 100,000 sf and up to 22 breakout rooms. Construction on the expansion is to start next year and conclude in 2011. Though most of the destination’s meeting business comes from small groups, the center’s expansion will allow the city to go after functions with bigger space requirements, said Renee Areng, executive vice president of Visit Baton Rouge, the city’s CVB. “The majority of our city deals with meetings of 300 people or less,” she said. “The convention center itself allows us to go after a new market. With the additional square footage, we’d be looking not necessarily at bigger organizations, but at organizations that need more breakout space—probably meetings with 2,000 to 3,000 attendees,” she said. Currently, the center features a 26,150-sf ballroom, a 1,900-seat theater, and an arena that can host up to 12,000 people. Expansion plans also call for the construction of a new 400-room hotel adjacent to the convention center, as well as three new hotels within walking distance. Currently, Baton Rouge has just 600 rooms downtown; if all four new properties are built, it would have at least 1,000 more. I TENNESSEE Memphis 24 65 Nashville 40 Jackson 65 24 75 40 Knoxville 75 Chattanooga 32 81 Kingsport Greeneville Pigeon Forge Gatlinburg Walland Gaylord Postpones, Not Cancels, Opryland Expansion Although work is progressing slower than originally planned, a $400 million expansion of the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville is moving forward in the midst of uncertain economic conditions, Gaylord Entertainment president and CEO Colin Reed said on a recent earnings call. Construction was supposed to begin this year, but the expansion is still in the planning S4 MeetingNews November 10, 2008 stages. Building will begin if financial markets stabilize, he said. “We continue to work on our expansion plans, but we’re being very careful in overly committing serious capital until we see evidence that things are moving back towards a more normalized business environment.” he said. The expansion would add more than 400,000 sf of meeting and convention space to Opryland, along with a 400-room, all-suite hotel. Originally scheduled for completion in 2011, the expanded Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center would offer meeting planners a total of 3,281 hotel rooms and over 1 million sf of convention space. Meanwhile, the city of Nashville is moving forward on plans for a new downtown convention center. A site has already been selected for the 1.2-million-sf Music City Center; construction is to begin in spring 2009. I www.meetingnews.com http://www.meetingnews.com

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Meeting News - November 10, 2008

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