MetroWest Boston offers meeting planners something increasingly difficult to find: room to think, space to gather, and a setting that feels like an experience rather than simply another conference. Just 30 minutes from Boston but a world away from the city’s pace and price, MetroWest combines the convenience and infrastructure planners need with the unexpected places that make an event memorable. With 44 hotels, more than 200,000 square feet of meeting space, and a hotel average daily rate of just $142, the region offers exceptional value within easy reach of Boston Logan International, Worcester Regional, and Rhode Island T.F. Green International airports.
For large conferences and conventions, the options are sleek, substantial, and sophisticated. Recently, the Best Western Royal Plaza Hotel & Trade Center in Marlborough renovated its event rooms and public spaces, creating polished, professional surroundings with 20,000 square feet of meeting space, 307 guest rooms, an arcade, a pool, an on-site restaurant, and ample free on-site bus and car parking, plus an additional 47,500 square feet of highly customizable space in the adjacent trade center.
The newly remodeled Framingham Hotel Collection, a Marriott TriBrand Destination, brings together the 200-room full-service Renaissance Framingham Hotel & Conference Center, where tradition meets modernity; the 95-room TownePlace Suites by Marriott Framingham; and the 75-room Fairfield by Marriott Inn & Suites Framingham, all connected to 25,000 square feet of beautifully updated event space with 23 flexible breakout rooms.
But step beyond the ballroom, and you will see that MetroWest takes on a wholly distinct quality, full of New England charm and exceptional character. Set on 100 lakeside acres, the Warren Conference Center and Inn in Ashland pairs more than 11,000 square feet of meeting space with wooded trails, lawns with firepits, outdoor tented areas, and team-building activities on the lake and in the woods.
At Hopkinton Center for the Arts in Hopkinton, events can unfold in 6,000 square feet of theater and gallery spaces; an intimate, rustic timber-beamed Barn Loft; or beneath a tented outdoor amphitheater. HCA also offers custom art workshops and performances for your group.
Southwick’s Zoo in Mendon, New England’s largest zoo, offers nature-immersive gathering spaces—from the deer forest to tented pavilions—along with memory-making animal encounters and team-building activities that complement your agenda.
History and imagination provide still more possibilities. Host an event surrounded by antique aircraft at the American Heritage Museum in Hudson, or gather at Sudbury’s Wayside Inn, the oldest inn in America, with amazing literary and historic connections, and home to 12 meeting rooms, on-site catering, and 100 acres of picturesque grounds that include an antique grist mill.
From expansive trade shows to intimate retreats, MetroWest gives planners the flexibility to look beyond a traditional checklist of meeting space and envision what else a venue can bring to the experience. Whether that means gathering beside a lake, among works of art, beneath the trees, surrounded by history, or in a beautifully appointed ballroom, the setting itself can become part of the program. Include unique hands-on team-building activities with these remarkable settings, and you have a conference that people will reflect on for years to come.
Explore these and many other possibilities by downloading a free Group & Event Planning Guide. The MetroWest Boston Visitors Bureau is also available to assist with hotel recommendations, group dining, team-building activities, requests for proposals, visitor guides, and more.
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MetroWest Boston Visitors Bureau
508-434-4433
www.metrowestvisitors.org/meet
Stacey David, Executive Director
sdavid@metrowestvisitors.org
