Today’s meeting attendees want opportunities to experience a host city beyond the walls of a meeting room. This creates the opportunity for planners to think differently about their events’ sense of place. Instead of bringing area flavor into the ballroom, why not put part of the program directly into the setting?
With its vibrant culture and scenic beauty, Albuquerque, New Mexico, makes it easy to immerse meeting attendees in the host city. Here, the entire city can become part of a meeting without compromising flexibility or connectivity.
It starts with the neighborhoods. Albuquerque’s 17,000 hotel rooms are all within 20 minutes of the Albuquerque International Sunport—and almost everything else in the city—making it easy to expand a meeting’s footprint beyond one area.
Downtown, the 600,000-square-foot Albuquerque Convention Center can be an anchor, with over 1,000 rooms within walking distance at hotels like The Clyde Hotel and DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Albuquerque. From there, planners can shift portions of the program into different environments. Civic Plaza, across the street, can turn lunch into an outdoor picnic. It’s a way to reset the energy without touching the budget.
A similar strategy works in Old Town. For a midsize meeting, Hotel Albuquerque can anchor the group with lodging and event space in the neighborhood where the city was founded. The meeting can easily flow out into Old Town Plaza and the museum district. The Albuquerque Museum, about a five-minute walk, offers an auditorium, outdoor amphitheater, courtyard, and gallery space for groups of up to 500. Surrounding attendees with Southwest art and history during a networking reception does the work a traditional keynote usually has to do alone.
An event can also extend across neighborhoods. In the lively Uptown area, the Albuquerque Marriott Hotel and Sheraton Albuquerque Uptown both include meeting space and put attendees within walking distance of a busy shopping and dining district for downtime exploration. Part of the agenda can be travel to the Anderson Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum, the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History, or the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center for tours, receptions, or banquets in one-of-a-kind settings.
In Albuquerque, planners don’t have to reinvent the meeting’s structure or abandon the ballroom. They still can choose a home base and then look at venues located a few minutes away for the setting that fits the moment. It’s a convenient and affordable way to bring a touch of area color to a meeting. When a specific off-site, meal, or reception would land differently in an unexpected place, planners can put it there directly.
Discover how Visit Albuquerque can help design a flexible multivenue meeting at visitabq.org/meetings.
