Wine regions around the country have many beautiful hotels and gorgeous convention spaces to choose from. But when you’re searching for a more unique corporate event venue, perhaps for a board retreat, more unusual locales can fit the bill. Check out these five inspiring locations — with outstanding vino, to boot.

Implementing sustainable practices isn’t just good for the environment, it’s also good for business, as many convention centers have discovered. According to the 2017 Green Venue Report (the 2018 report has not yet been released), event venues are saving millions of dollars each year thanks to sustainability upgrades through energy, waste or water conservation programs.

In late February, I had the opportunity to tour a little bit of Japan on the “Meet Japan” trip hosted by Japan National Tourism Organization. In addition to Tokyo Marunouchi, I visited Yokohoma and Matsue. The two cities couldn’t be more different, aside from the fact that both offer subsidies for groups of a certain size bringing international visitors to Japan.

Tokyo, Japan’s capital, is one of the most heavily populated cities in the world. Home to approximately 37 million people, it’s no wonder the city has the modern infrastructure to host such events as the 2020 Olympics.  

Yet the city also successfully blends old with new. In the midst of urban areas, you will find tranquil Buddhist temples, such as Sensō-ji, and Shinto shrines, like Kanda Myōjin and Meiji Jingū, all spiritual sanctuaries where people still come to worship and pray for good fortune.

Fresh off a massive $620 million renovation completed in 2018, the LEED-certified Miami Beach Convention Center is an incredible place for large groups to convene in The Magic City. Yet if you’re a smaller corporate group, the 1.4-million-square-foot space might just swallow you up whole — or at least feel a bit overwhelming.

Following a recent trip to the sunny destination, we’ve rounded up some our favorite, more intimate venues for meeting in Miami.

The $130 million, 250,000-square-foot expansion of MGM Grand Conference Center is now complete, meaning MGM Resorts now offers a total of 4 million square feet of meeting and convention space on the Las Vegas Strip. (For reference, that’s more than all the convention space in Manhattan combined.)
 
“With our expansion, upgraded amenities, new outdoor space and user-friendly connectivity packages, we provide our convention customers an enhanced meeting experience with more options,” said Ernest Stovall, vice president of Sales for MGM Grand.
 

At Corporate Event News, we aim to bring you all the news from all the locations. During the month of March, we’ll be focusing on California and the Southeast, although that doesn’t mean we will be ignoring the rest of the world.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham is celebrating its golden anniversary this year with the addition of a new on-campus flagship hotel with event space. Hilton Birmingham at UAB opened its doors on Jan. 31.

In November of 2016, UAB purchased the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Birmingham. The property was closed in March 2018 for a multimillion-dollar transformation, renovating and rebranding to reflect both the Hilton brand and the university’s spirit.

There’s a new location in Florida for meetings, incentive trips or retreats. Located an hour from Miami International Airport, the 200-room Baker’s Cay Resort Key Largo, Curio Collection by Hilton offers more than 25,000 square feet of indoor/outdoor space.

Portland, Ore. is rising to the top of the list for many corporations looking for a new destination for their events.

Known for its coffee shops, doughnuts, microbreweries, Powell’s bookstore and men with beards, Portland is the largest city in the state. It’s also known for its parks, being environmentally friendly and for the “Keep Portland Weird” counterculture, lovingly ridiculed in the sketch-comedy television show “Portlandia.”