Ask anyone what first comes to mind when they think of Tennessee and they’ll likely mention Graceland, country music and the blues. While the legendary musical heritage of central and west Tennessee reigns supreme, there’s more to this area than tunes.
Thanks to a thrilling NCAA championship game, Memphis has become a top destination for sports fans, while Nashville reaches beyond its country roots with hip new clubs and a growing culinaryscene. Throw in the rich history of Jackson and the outdoor fun available in Hardin County, and the potential for top-notch meetings will be music to planners’ ears.
Memphis
Although Memphis has long been a place where musicians’ dreams came true, the city now has official status as a “dream destination” and is featured in a new volume by Life Books on the subject. With more than 50 attractions unique to the city, Memphis has a worldwide reputation for fun, food and music.
“Most planners recognize Memphis is a cool city with a great vibe, but several tell us they didn’t realize we had so much to offer,” says John Oros, executive vice president of the Memphis CVB.
With the National Civil Rights Museum, Graceland, the Memphis Rock ’n’ Soul Museum, and the live music and sizzling nightlife on Beale Street, it’s easy to forget that Memphis also has a business side. Large meetings are easily handled by the recently renovated Memphis Cook Convention Center, which offers more than 300,000 square feet of exhibit, meeting and event space, and the FedEx Institute of Technology offers a cutting-edge venue for meetings, complete with a high-definition theater for presentations.
Small meetings are also vitally important to the city, and Oros says a full-time salesperson on the CVB staff is dedicated solely to meetings that fit within one property. With several new properties recently opened and coming online, that job will get much busier. The Westin Memphis Beale Street opened last year with 203 rooms and nearly 7,000 square feet of meeting space; the new Hotel Indigo Memphis will start construction next year and open with 125 rooms by fall 2010; and construction started this spring on the 39-room Grade Hotel, which will offer 5,000 square feet of meeting space, along with a bar and restaurant. Meanwhile, the former Wyndham Garden Hotel Memphis received some upgrades and renovations when it was reflagged earlier this year as the Crowne Plaza Memphis, and new Holiday Inn and Candlewood Suites properties are in the works as well.
The additions complement meetings-ready standbys like the Peabody Memphis and the Hilton Memphis.
While much of the spotlight is on the clubs and eateries of Beale Street, there are other unique off-site venues available for groups. For sports fans, Memphis Motorsports Park offers special pricing and group packages, or attendees can enjoy a reception at Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 Sports Bar before sitting down for a Memphis Grizzlies basketball game at FedEx Forum, a popular ticket since the Grizzlies made it all the way to the final NCAA game in 2008. Planners who want to score extra points for style can set up a reception at Graceland, Elvis’ home and a Memphis landmark.
Nashville
The capital of country music only needs one name: Nashville. A city on the verge of major development, Nashville is also seeing new markets open up in the wake of a changing economy.
The city is eagerly awaiting construction of the new Music City Convention Center, now expected to break ground in the first quarter of next year and open in 2012 with 400,000 square feet of space, complementing the existing Nashville Convention Center.
The largest non-gaming hotel property in the country, the 2,881-room Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center, is now undergoing a massive expansion, adding 400 guest rooms and 400,000 square feet of meeting and event space. The addition will boost the facility’s meeting space to nearly 700,000 square feet.
Within the last year, the 154-room Hampton Inn and Suites Downtown and the 113-room Homewood Suites by Hilton Nashville-Downtown opened, and the 250-room Hotel Hutton is slated to debut by the end of this year with a conference center, meeting facilities and a restaurant.
The new properties augment existing meetings favorites like the Renaissance Nashville Hotel, Hilton Nashville Downtown, Sheraton Music City, and Union Station–A Wyndham Historic Hotel, while just outside Nashville in Williamson County is the Franklin Marriott Cool Springs and the attached Cool Springs Conference Center.
Kay Witt, senior vice president of sales for the Nashville CVB, believes the current wave of development sweeping the city is just the tip of the iceberg.
“When the convention center comes on-line, we’ll see additional development in downtown, moving us to that next tier in terms of overall product,” she says. “We’re having a very good lead year, with the most leads ever generated for Nashville.”
While a large portion of the city’s meetings come from corporate and association gatherings, a growing number of European meetings are discovering Nashville as well, especially science, medical and engineering groups that seek out locations like the bioscience research facilities at Vanderbilt University and Nissan headquarters.
“The Tennessean just did a story on how the European market is growing,” Witt says. “With the Euro so strong, Nashville is a bargain they can’t resist.”
Nashville is also filled with can’t-miss off-site venues, from the Country Music Hall of Fame to Ryman Auditorium, the famed former home of the Grand Ole Opry. Attendees can while away an evening and catch the next big thing in music down in Honky Tonk Land, a string of clubs that feature live performances by up-and-coming artists. Hip new clubs are also popping up, like the upcoming Fuse club at Gaylord Opryland Resort, giving younger attendees an alternative to country music.
Foodies can get their fix at several new restaurants in town, from modern Latin fusion cuisine at Lime to signature dishes by Chef John David Crow at 360 Bistro.
Jackson
Between Memphis and Nashville, Jackson has centuries of Southern culture to explore, from the Rockabilly Hall of Fame to Casey Jones Village, an attraction celebrating trains and the selfless courage of the legendary engineer, who saved his train passengers by sacrificing himself in a train wreck in 1900.
The area was also home to another popular folk hero, Sheriff Buford Pusser, whose story was told in the Walking Tall movies, and a museum is filled with related memorabilia. Add several Civil War battlefields, the Shiloh National Military Park and the irresistible National Bird Dog Museum, and Jackson becomes too cool to pass by.
“In Jackson, you can have a taste of the South at your own pace,” says Colleen Coury, executive director for the Jackson CVB. “We have big-city flair with small-town charm.”
With so many family-friendly attractions, Jackson is vying to capture the lucrative student and youth group market, and Coury says the city plans to partner with Memphis to attract choirs and other musical youth events.
“We have a lot of musical heritage here, like the Rockabilly Museum and Carl Perkins birthplace, and we want to work with the strengths we have,” she says. “But we also value our current markets—the associations, church groups and reunions.”
Group facilities include the Carl Perkins Civic Center, the 5,600-seat Oman Arena and the Ned R. McWherter West Tennessee Cultural Arts Center. The city’s primary meetings hotels are the Doubletree Hotel Jackson, the Holiday Inn Jackson and the Old English Inn Hotel and Convention Center.
Hardin County
Smaller meetings will fit perfectly in Hardin County, an area filled with outdoor fun and history.
The golden age of steamboats lives on at the Tennessee River Museum, while Civil War buffs can load up on trivia at Shiloh National Military Park and Shiloh Civil War Relics Museum.
Attendees can slow down and take a stroll along the Savannah Historic District and walking trail, which features more than a dozen graceful homes, or head out to Pickwick Lake for fishing, swimming and fun in the sun.
According to Rachel Baker, tourism director for Team Hardin County, the area mainly sees small association meetings of roughly 100 attendees.
The area’s largest venue, the Pickwick Landing State Resort Park and Conference Center, which just completed guest area upgrades, features a golf course, a 500-seat conference center and a 7,500-square-foot convention center.
Other meetings-friendly properties in Hardin County include the Hampton Inn Pickwick Dam and the Comfort Inn Savannah.
“We offer meeting attendees a lot of vacation with a little business mixed in,” Baker says. “Right now, we’re getting groups that book extra days either before or after their meeting, and take vacation time with their families here to save on gas prices.”
A popular off-site venue is the Pickwick Belle, a paddle wheeler that can host 80 for a sit-down dinner.
Baker says the CVB will also help planners with special events, from arranging fishing tournaments to Civil War site tours.
For More Info
Hardin County CVB 731.925.8181 www.tourhardincounty.org
Jackson CVB 731.425.8333 www.jacksontncvb.com
Memphis CVB 901.543.5300 www.memphistravel.com
Nashville CVB 615.259.4730 www.visitmusiccity.com
