Sandwiched in between two states with flashier profiles, Oregon sometimes gets overlooked. But its “middle child” status makes Oregon all the more attractive for meetings—an unspoiled place where planners will find first-class facilities and amenities that offer comparative availability and value.
At the same time, Oregon boasts one of the country’s most vibrant cultural scenes, as scores of artists and creative entrepreneurs, priced out of places like San Francisco and Los Angeles, are finding cities such as Portland a welcome alternative. Great dining is another reason to choose Oregon, which boasts a burgeoning number of restaurants drawing on seasonal Pacific Northwest ingredients, including award-wining local wines.
Long known for its pristine wilderness areas, Oregon also features top-quality mountain and seaside resorts offering everything from world-class golf to storm watching to fly-fishing.
So for either urban excitement or outdoor adventure, Oregon is a meetings destination with a distinctive profile all its own.
Greater Portland
Oregon’s largest city and cultural hub, Portland has just about everything that is desirable for meetings.
There’s a newly expanded and environmentally friendly convention center, a broad range of hotels, efficient light rail transportation, good air accessibility, and plenty of great choices for special events. Rounding out its destination appeal is a great selection of restaurants, retail shopping, art galleries, nightlife, museums, and parks.
The city also offers a good choice of convention hotels, including the 503-room Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront, which includes 35,000 square feet of meeting space, and the 476-room Doubletree Hotel–Lloyd Center, which features an IACC-approved conference center. Other major group-friendly hotels include the 318-room Red Lion Hotel on the River and the 174-room Red Lion Hotel Convention Center.
In recent years, Portland has become known for its stylish boutique hotels located in historic buildings, including the 150-room Heathman and the 221-room Hotel Monaco Portland.
At the same time, the city is moving closer to getting the one important amenity it lacks: a convention headquarters hotel. Portland’s regional government body, the Metro Council, recently voted to take on the responsibility of securing low-interest funding for a $150 million, 600-room hotel to be built adjacent to the Oregon Convention Center.
“This would put us in a whole new realm,” says Mike Smith, vice president of sales for the Portland Oregon Visitors Association (POVA), of the project, which is still several years away from fruition. “Right now there are many groups who will not meet here, even though they love Portland, because we do not have a headquarters hotel. We’ve got top-quality hotels, but we are limited by our room blocks.”
Large convention groups in Portland, which can range from 2,500 to 5,000 people on peak nights, are typically spread out between eight or nine hotels in the downtown area.
“If we had the headquarters hotel, this would be cut in half,” Smith says.
POVA’s push to perfect the city’s convention package is coming at a time when Portland is facing increasing competition.
“So many smaller cities have built new convention centers, new hotels. The competition is all around us,” Smith says.
On a more positive note, the rebounding economy means Portland is now better able to compete with first-tier cities for value-conscious business.
“Now that rates are back to normal in San Francisco and Seattle, our customers are coming back to us,” Smith says. “Our hotel rates are typically $10 to $15 a night cheaper than in those cities.”
A lot of cultural activity in recent years has made the choices for off-site venues even more attractive in Portland. New attractions in the downtown area include the Portland Art Museum’s Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art and the Portland Classical Chinese Garden.
Adjacent to downtown, the Pearl District, an area of reclaimed warehouses and rail yards, is filled with art galleries, ethnic restaurants, residential lofts, and clubs. Another up-and-coming place to explore is northeast Portland’s Alberta Arts District, which is known for its glass and pottery studios and boutiques.
Just beyond Portland there is much more to discover. A few miles to the west and connected to the city by the MAX light-rail system is Washington County, an area celebrated for its wineries, golf courses and wetland preserves. The county offers a hotel inventory of about 5,000 rooms in meetings-friendly properties such as the McMenamins Grand Lodge in Forest Grove and the Embassy Suites Portland Washington Square in Tigard.
The area surrounding majestic Mt. Hood, just east of Portland, is rife with opportunities for skiing, snowboarding, kayaking, boating, fishing, rock climbing, and much more. In Cascade Locks, Sternwheeler excursions up the Columbia River to view the spectacular Columbia Gorge are easily arranged.
Resorts geared for meetings in the area include the 70-room Timberline Lodge, a National Historic Landmark located at the 6,000-foot level on Mt. Hood, and the Resort at the Mountain, a 160-room luxury property with 27 holes of golf and 18,000 square feet of function space.
Farther north, facing Oregon from the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge, groups can meet, stay and play at the Skamania Lodge. The property features 254 guest rooms and an IACC-certified conference center with 22,000 square feet of meeting space.
Willamette Valley
Sometimes called the “Heart of Oregon,” the lush valley carved by the Willamette River between the Pacific Coast and the Cascade Mountains is lined with quaint college towns, vineyards, verdant parks, and historic sites associated with the pioneers who settled the region in the mid-19th century.
Salem, the state capital, is among the region’s major meetings destinations, gaining new stature with the 2005 opening of the 29,400-square-foot Salem Conference Center and the adjoining 193-room Phoenix Grand Hotel.
“Our new conference center is really opening up the association market for us,” says Debbie McCune, director of sales for the Salem Convention and Visitors Authority. “We can host 700 to 800 people there. We’re getting some new groups and some that have not been here for years.”
Another major Salem meetings venue, the 148-room Red Lion Inn and Conference Center, which can accommodate up to 600 people in its main ballroom, has just completed a $2.5 million renovation of all guest rooms and public spaces.
To the south, Eugene, home to the University of Oregon, is also seeing new interest from the association market, according to Lisa Lawton, director of community relations for the Convention and Visitors Association of Lane County. The city is gearing up to host the 2008 Olympic Track and Field Trials this summer, which is expected to draw as many as 17,000 spectators a day.
“Because of this major event, we’ve already seen interest from one major religious conference,” Lawton says. “With the media attention, we think a lot of associations will see what we can do.”
Eugene, which offers the Hilton Eugene and Conference Center, featuring 30,000 square feet of meeting space, experienced a slight increase in its room inventory this year with the recent opening of an 88-room Holiday Inn Express.
Nearby Springfield saw the opening in March of a 153-room Holiday Inn, the first full-service property for Lane County in two decades. A feasibility study for the development of a conference center in Springfield is currently under way.
Southwestern Oregon
Jet boating and kayaking on the Rogue River, skiing and hiking on Mt. Ashland, touring Victorian homes, shopping for art and antiques, tasting local wines, and enjoying world-class performing arts are just a few of the options available in this cosmopolitan yet pastoral region just over the California border.
The area’s largest city, Medford, offers easy access off Interstate 5 as well as nonstop air service from Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Reno, Denver, and Salt Lake City. Along with 2,000 hotel rooms and 110,500 square feet of meeting space, Medford features unique venues such as a restored Boeing KC-97 aircraft at the Rogue Valley-Medford International Airport.
A few miles west of Medford, the frontier town of Jacksonville features more than 80 restored Victorian-era homes and public buildings, some available for off-site events. To the south, Ashland offers several meetings-friendly hotels, including the 230-room Windmill Inn, as well as the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Coastal Oregon
Oregon’s ruggedly beautiful coastline includes several areas, most of them clustered on the northern half of the coast, that are well-equipped to handle small to midsize meetings.
“We handle a broad range of groups, everything from state and regional associations on up to international groups,” says Rebecca Morris, executive director of the Oregon Coast Visitors Association, a marketing organization for communities up and down the coast.
Seaside has the coast’s largest meeting facility, the Seaside Civic and Convention Center, which overlooks Quatat Marine Park and offers 22,000 square feet of meeting space, including a main hall seating up to 900 people. About 1,400 rooms in hotels, motels and condos support the facility.
The coast’s newest attraction is the Pacific Coast Center for the Culinary Arts, which opened in March in Lincoln City. The facility can provide customized classes and cooking demonstrations for groups of 20 or less.
Just south of Lincoln City in Gleneden Beach is one of Oregon’s most upscale properties for meetings, the 205-room Salishan Spa and Golf Resort. Along with an 18-hole championship golf course and new full-service spa, Salishan offers more than a dozen meeting areas, including an elegant wine cellar available for private dinners and wine-tasting events.
Central Oregon
One of Oregon’s top recreation areas, this mountainous, high desert region is home to some of the state’s finest resorts and visitor attractions.
Recently named by Money magazine as one of the nation’s best places to retire, Bend, the largest city in the region, offers an excellent choice of restaurants and off-site venues, including the High Desert Museum, which showcases the region’s natural history in both indoor and outdoor exhibits.
Meeting facilities in Bend got a major boost recently with the opening of the Riverhouse Convention Center. The riverfront facility, which is adjacent to the 220-room Riverhouse Resort Hotel, offers 29,000 square feet of indoor meeting space, 2,000 square feet of outdoor space and architectural features such as a 22-foot waterfall cascading from one floor to another.
Another major meetings property is under way for Bend. Dolce International will operate a destination resort, the Hotel Tetherow, set for completion in early 2009. The resort will include 150 guest rooms, 50 luxury cabins, a full-service spa, and a conference center.
Located 15 miles south of Bend is the region’s largest property, the 236-room Sunriver Resort, with amenities that include three golf courses and more than 44,000 square feet of meeting and banquet space. Currently under development are several luxury riverfront cabins and a nine-hole golf course.
According to ShanRae Hawkins, the resort’s director of sales and marketing, Sunriver has become a popular spot for corporate retreats, which can rent some of the 400 vacation homes on the resort grounds.
“We can put groups in clusters of homes, so they get more of a personal, relaxed feel,” she says.
Eastern Oregon
Eastern Oregon’s wide-open landscape is where the state’s Old West heritage lives on, especially in Pendleton, the region’s largest city and site of the annual Pendleton Round-Up, a mid-September event that features an old-fashioned rodeo and pageants of Native American and pioneer culture.
Pendleton also offers intriguing diversions for groups year-round, including Pendleton Underground Tours, which explore tunnels where opium dens and honky-tonk gambling joints once thrived beneath the city streets. The Pendleton Woolen Mills, which have been making fine blankets and clothing for nearly a century, offers tours and a showroom.
The major hotels for groups in Pendleton include the recently renovated, 170-room Red Lion Hotel and the 87-unit Oxford Suites. One of the oldest operating guest ranches in the West is the nearby Bar M Ranch, originally built as a stagecoach station in 1864.
For More Info
Ashland COC 541.482.3486
www.ashlandchamber.com
Astoria/Warrenton Area COC 503.325.6311
www.oldoregon.com
Bend Visitor and Convention Bureau 541.382.8048
www.visitbend.com
Clackamas County Tourism Development Council–Oregon’s Mt. Hood Territory 503.655.8490
www.mthoodterritory.com
Convention and Visitors Association of Lane County 541.484.5307
www.visitlanecounty.org
Corvallis Tourism CVB 541.757.1544
www.visitcorvallis.com
CVB of Washington County 503.644.5555
www.countrysideofportland.com
Greater Newport COC 541.265.8801
www.newportchamber.org
Hood River County COC 541.386.2000
www.hoodriver.org
Lincoln City Visitor and Convention Bureau 541.996.1274
www.oregoncoast.org
Medford Visitors and Convention Bureau 541.779.4847
www.visitmedford.org
Ontario COC 541.889.8012
www.ontariochamber.com
Oregon Coast Visitors Association 541.574.2679
www.visittheoregoncoast.com
Oregon Tourism Commission 503.378.8850
www.traveloregon.com
Pendleton COC 541.276.7411
www.pendleton-oregon.org
Portland Oregon Visitors Association 503.275.9750
www.pova.org
Roseburg Visitors and Convention Bureau 541.672.9731
www.visitroseburg.com
Salem Convention and Visitors Association 503.581.4325
www.travelsalem.com
Seaside Visitors Bureau 503.738.3097
www.seasideor.com
