They may not be total opposites, but let’s just say Palm Beach and the Treasure Coast share the ideal complementary relationship. While one bustles, the other simmers. One is known for its Rolls Royce count, the other for its number of exotic bird species. And yet they meet in the middle beautifully, as anyone looking beyond the posh of Palm Beach or the rustic charms of the Treasure Coast soon discovers.
No matter where you’re headed along this span of shoreline between South Florida and Central Florida, your meeting will be golden.
Palm Beach
The county of Palm Beach is actually bigger than the state of Rhode Island, so if you were expecting variety, you’d find it here.
"We have a wide range of hotel experiences available in Palm Beach County and easy access to them," notes Jorge Pesquera, president and CEO of the Palm Beach County CVB, pointing to such fabled grand hotels as The Breakers and the Boca Raton Resort & Club. "We clearly have a great reputation as having some of the most classic resort properties in the country, but the reality is that more than 50 percent of our inventory is on what we call the ‘I-95 Corridor.’"
That is, within a mile of the main interstate highway are a host of moderate accommodations, including the new Homewood Suites by Hilton and SpringHill Suites by Marriott, both of which opened in 2009 and like other properties clustered nearby, boast accessibility to the airport and the beach.
"There are places in Palm Beach County where the beach is barely five minutes from I-95, and that’s a big deal when you’re talking about getting around for events or off-site venues," Pesquera says. "It’s a piece of cake up here."
"If you’re trying to downplay the ‘resort’ side of things, these hotels are ideal," seconds Steve Crist, the CVB’s vice president of convention and group sales. "If you still want to be in Florida, and we know Florida is an attraction in itself, you can stay under a major flag and still have that resort experience close to the beach."
And of course, if you’re not trying to downplay the resort experience, you’ve definitely come to the right town. The on-property amenities of a resort like The Breakers rarely fail to impress—45,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor meeting space, 36 holes of championship golf, a 20,000-square-foot spa—while the Boca Raton Resort & Club sprawls across 356 acres that encompass golf, tennis, a sumptuous spa and newly renovated beach club, along with 67 meeting rooms, including the 80,000-square-foot Mizner Center.
Even the boutique properties in Palm Beach are jaw-dropping, from historic icons like the Brazilian Court, recipient of numerous awards for both architecture and dining, to the new Omphoy Ocean Resort, featuring a restaurant helmed by 2008 James Beard award winner Michelle Bernstein.
Beyond where to stay and meet, though, planners will find a similar variety when pondering what to do in Palm Beach County. Though long known as a swank getaway for the upper crust, beneath the surface, the Palm Beach experience goes way beyond polo and croquet (although the region is home to a polo club and the largest croquet complex in the world). At any given moment, attendees might be touring a museum, driving through an animal preserve or snorkeling an underwater reef.
"We used to basically tell the story of Palm Beach County as a beach and golf destination," Pesquera says. "Now we want people to know we cater to the eco-adventure traveler, the culture and heritage market, the family market and the gay and lesbian market. We have this massive area that has no clear epicenter of tourism activity."
To assist travelers and meeting planners with navigating the 2,578-square-mile chunk of land that stretches from the beaches to Lake Okeechobee and includes the cities of Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Boynton Beach, Lake Worth, Jupiter and 33 other towns, the CVB launched a redesigned website last November that "has a 10-fold increase in content," Pesquera says. "It’s a completely new marketing tool."
In fact, "increase" seems to be the operative word in Palm Beach County, which at press time had enjoyed four straight months of increased occupancy versus the year before.
"[In February,] we had a 12 percent increase over 2009," Pesquera says. "In this economy, we’re still not out of the woods, but we’re trending in a positive way."
No doubt adding to that positive trend was new nonstop seasonal service from Palm Beach International Airport to Chicago-O’Hare International Airport on American Airlines, and a new cruise ship, the Bahamas Celebration, calling at the Port of Palm Beach. Meanwhile, a long-planned convention center headquarters hotel project—once nearly moribund—is back on the front burner, spearheaded by the South Florida powerhouse real estate firm The Related Group, developers of CityPlace, a shopping, dining and entertainment district located across the street from the Palm Beach County Convention Center.
With a Hilton flag selected and a 2014 opening projected, the new property will have 400 rooms with the potential for further growth, Pesquera says.
"The Related Group has a big incentive to get this hotel done because the more people that are flowing through it will create foot traffic for CityPlace," he adds.
Treasure Coast
North of Palm Beach, traffic of all kinds slows down a bit in Indian River County, home to the seaside enclaves of Vero Beach and Sebastian, where 26 miles of unspoiled beaches remain unpopulated—both by crowds and high-rise hotels blocking the view.
That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of oceanfront accommodations here. There are, and many have space for small to midsize meetings, including Disney’s Vero Beach Resort; Costa d’Este Beach Resort, owned by singer Gloria Estefan; and the new Surf Club Hotel (formerly the Vero Beach Inn), which is undergoing extensive renovations.
But nature is a priority here, as groups will discover at locales like Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge—a bird rookery island providing nesting habitats for native and migrating birds—and Sebastian Inlet Park, where groups can unwind by swimming, snorkeling, fishing or exploring the McLarty Treasure Museum, housing riches salvaged from 18th century Spanish galleon wrecks.
"When people attend meetings, they also like to have other things to do, and we have a lot of outdoor leisure activities in addition to our indoor luxury," says Susan Hunt, director of tourism for the Indian River Chamber of Commerce, pointing to venues like the Environmental Learning Center on Wabasso Island, which offers guided nature walks, canoe excursions on Indian River Lagoon and nature-themed workshops. Other choices include cruises down the Sebastian River, during which "the manatees basically come right up to you," she says.
Beyond the region’s natural gifts, though, there are a surprising number of cultural activities as well.
"One of our big advantages is that we have a quaint, small-town ambience but with all the benefits of a bigger town, including the culture," Hunt says.
Indeed, your group might catch a symphonic performance, enjoy a night with the Vero Beach Opera or tour historic downtown Vero Beach, starting at the 1903 Train Station that houses the Indian River County Historical Society.
If more nature is on the agenda, though, head north to St. Lucie County, where sites including Fort Pierce Inlet State Park, Bear Point Sanctuary, Pinelands Natural Area and Savannas Preserve State Park, all part of the Great Florida Birding Trail, will take you into the habitats of scrub-jays, wood storks, night herons and many more feathered residents.
Meanwhile, St. Lucie County is one of the few places in the state where you can ride horses on the beach, offered through the county’s parks and recreation department; or trek by horseback through miles of lush subtropical vegetation. Basic instruction, supervised rides or lessons in the arts of jumping and dressage are all available here, depending on the group’s experience level.
If you stay where you play in St. Lucie, the 108-room Courtyard by Marriott Hutchinson Island isn’t far from where the horses run and features 1,300 square feet of meeting space. Other options in St. Lucie include the Club Med Sandpiper all-inclusive resort, with conference facilities for up to 500, and the new Hilton Garden Inn–Port St. Lucie PGA Village, which has 1,750 square feet of conference space.
