Even in a state devoted to leisure travel, Southwest Florida stands out when it comes to a leisurely attitude.
Quiet white-sand beaches, far-reaching wilderness preserves and spiraling inland waterways set the stage for tranquil kayak treks and scenic hikes in this lush retreat extending from Charlotte Harbor down to Everglades City, while the only rush you might encounter will come from an airboat ride or thrilling sail across sparkling Gulf waters.
Even the downtown regions here are laid-back—low-rise, low-key and filled with places to stop and shop or sip coffee before browsing nearby antique shops, boutiques and art galleries.
"We still have that small-town charm," says Jack Wert, executive director of the Naples, Marco Island, Everglades CVB. "Yet we also have some great opportunities for people to explore nature, which is a growing interest among vacationers and meeting attendees alike."
Naples, Marco Island and the Everglades
It’s possible to skip civilization altogether and head straight into the wild in this southernmost region of Southwest Florida, where a full 80 percent of the land is set aside for preserves and parks, including the Big Cypress National Preserve, featuring a public boardwalk that leads into a pristine cypress dome, and Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park, home to the rare and elusive ghost orchid featured in The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean and the movie Adaptation.
Meanwhile, elusive birds, including the endangered wood stork, are the main attraction at the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, set on the edge of the Everglades just 25 minutes from downtown Naples. And it’s a quick jump from swamps to mangroves at Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge, the nation’s only subtropical mangrove forest, which is easily experienced via eco-friendly Waverunner tours available from the beaches of Marco Island.
After all that, would you even want to head back indoors? Naples and Marco Island make it easy with an enticing array of restaurants and cultural venues, including a number of serious art galleries, community art centers and the Philharmonic Center for the Arts complex, which also can host group functions of up to 1,425.
"We have far more arts and culture offerings than other towns our size," Wert notes. "You can see things here that you normally would in Miami or Orlando. It creates so many more opportunities for meeting attendees."
Meetings in Naples, Marco Island and the Everglades are based at local resorts and hotels, with space ranging from intimate to copious.
The Marco Island Marriott Beach Resort, for example, boasts 225,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor space, while 7,900 square feet at the boutique Inn on Fifth includes a stunning poolside courtyard. Attendees can get spoiled by the beach and spa at The Ritz-Carlton, Naples, home to 42,000 square feet of meeting space, or rough it at Ivey House in Everglades City, where team-building adventures include kayaking a mangrove pond or dining by candelight in a saw grass prairie.
Other hotels with meeting facilities include LaPlaya Beach & Golf Resort; the Naples Grande Beach Resort; GreenLinks Golf Resort & Conference Center; and the Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club, which unveiled a new four-pool swim complex earlier this year, adding to its outdoor function space.
But resort and hotel facilities aren’t alone on the meetings landscape. The Naples Botanical Garden provides a colorful backdrop for group events with cultivated gardens featuring the flowers and plants of Brazil, the Caribbean, Asia and Florida. The venue’s newly remodeled Windstar Garden Room can accommodate up to 125 people in 4,000 square feet of space.
Beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel
Heading up the coast from Naples, the small towns are a little bigger and an international airport welcomes major carriers from all over the country, but the same water-based adventures and lush preserves await in the Beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel. The Great Calusa Blueway Paddling Trail, for one, laces through protected intracoastal waterways and rivers for 100 miles from Cayo Costa and Pine Island in the north to Bonita Springs’ Imperial River in the south. In between are a host of stops and sights, including Estero Bay Preserve State Park, where paddlers are often accompanied by dolphins, and the Commodore Creek mangrove-canopied trail, part of J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge.
Pick up the pace a bit at the Offshore Sailing and Power School, operating out of South Seas Island Resort on Captiva Island and Pink Shell Beach Resort on Fort Myers Beach, which, in addition to sailing clinics, offers team-building race programs. Or go in search of manatees with various tour boats that cruise the Caloosahatchee and Orange rivers. The gentle giants congregate here during winter months to feed and stay warm.
The mighty Caloosahatchee, in addition to being a manatee habitat, is also the flowing focal point of a vibrant downtown historic district currently undergoing a redevelopment initiative to improve streetscapes and public spaces. Set within walking distance of new shops, galleries and restaurants, many housed in buildings dating back to the city’s early 20th century heyday, is the Harborside Event Center, boasting 30,000 square feet of exhibit space and 10,000 square feet of riverfront prefunction space.
Downtown walking tours for groups of 10 or more are conducted Wednesdays at 10 a.m. (January to May) from the nearby Southwest Florida Museum of History. The two-hour program takes in the scenic riverfront, old fort grounds and the Fort Myers Yacht Basin. Fort Myers’ magical history tour continues at the Edison & Ford Winter Estates—also overlooking the Caloosahatchee—once the winter homes of famous snowbirds Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, and today a museum complex that also offers several indoor and outdoor locations for group events and parties, including an expansive waterfront lawn.
More conventional meeting space can be found at the Hyatt Coconut Point Resort & Spa, with 73,000 square feet of indoor meeting space; Sanibel Harbour Resort & Spa—now a Marriott—offering 45,000 square feet of function space; and the new Resort at MarinaVillage in Cape Coral, which is a short drive from Fort Myers and offers 25,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor meeting space. Other recent newcomers include the Hyatt Place Fort Myers at the Forum, boasting free Wi-Fi throughout the property, and the Hotel Indigo in the Downtown River District, offering a 24-hour business center and flexible meeting space for up to 30 people.
"We had several hundred rooms open between 2007 and 2009, during the best years in terms of the economy," notes Pamela Johnson, director of sales for the Beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel. "But we’re reading about an uptick in business across the U.S., so we feel very confident that we will see that, too. This summer, we had a lot of association business, so that was encouraging."
Also encouraging is new Delta service from Raleigh-Durham into Southwest Florida International Airport, which will begin Nov. 20.
Meanwhile, the bureau is continuing to offer a meetings incentive introduced in 2008, giving planners the opportunity to receive a 5 percent credit—up to a maximum $5,000 of actualized room revenue—toward any meeting or conference taking place between May 1, 2011, and Dec. 15, 2011.
Charlotte Harbor & the Gulf Islands
North of Fort Myers and Sanibel, the Everglades recede, but the dilemma in Charlotte Harbor & the Gulf Islands remains the same: which eco activity to do first.
In addition to 28 miles of uncrowded beaches, the area boasts 830 miles of navigable waterways, including shimmering Charlotte Harbor and the Peace and Myakka rivers, known for excellent backwater fishing, colorful birds, dolphin and manatee sightings and eerily beautiful mangrove tunnels. Inland from the pristine coast, vast wilderness tracts include Babcock-Webb Wildlife Management Area, which spans more than 65,000 acres of wildlife habitats, flatwoods and hammocks, and is home to Babcock Ranch, offering guided swamp buggy ecotours through Telegraph Cypress Swamp, where visitors encounter panthers, alligators and a seemingly infinite number of birds.
"Ecotourism is our bread and butter," says Becky Bovell, outgoing director of the Charlotte County Visitors Bureau. (Bovell retired at the end of October.)
But Bovell says variety is certainly a hallmark of this verdant coastal enclave, noting that a recent group itinerary included a tour of the Punta Gorda Historic District, a Charlotte Harbor boat cruise, a visit to Muscle Car City (displaying over 200 high-performance cars) and the hoisting of pints at the British pub Ice House.
"There was a little bit for everyone," she says.
The sight of groups of people immersed in local activities has become more commonplace in Charlotte County since the late 2008 debut of the Charlotte Harbor Event & Conference Center, located on the Peace River in downtown Punta Gorda and offering 44,000 square feet of exhibition and meeting space.
"We’ve had some pretty interesting events recently and many more are on the way," Bovell says, pointing to September’s Florida Main Street Annual Conference and the upcoming Florida State Golden Gloves boxing championships, among the many gatherings—corporate, association and SMERF—hosted at the center.
"We’re very pleased, not only because it takes a while to get these events and convention centers jump-started, but we feel very good about the number and diversity of events we have on the books," she says. "Things are moving along in terms of us being a new conference destination."
Also moving things along is the newly expanded Punta Gorda Airport, which welcomes service from Allegiant Air and Direct Air; Bovell says both carriers will be adding origin cities in the coming months.
