Although few conference centers are under construction, there have been recent openings and management changes.
Benchmark Hospitality International took on the management of Virginia Tech’s 5-year-old Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton Conference Center in Blacksburg, Va., Jan. 1. The IACC-certified property at the university’s main campus has 147 guest rooms and 23,705 square feet of meeting space.
Benchmark, which has 20 resorts, hotels and conference centers in North America, 10 of them IACC-certified, will also open and manage the 800-room Deloitte University, Deloitte’s new private learning and leadership development facility, opening in Westlake, Texas, this year.
Last year, Dolce Hotels and Resorts opened the Dolce Munich Unterschleissheim, an IACC 255-room conference hotel near Munich, Germany, with 16,308 square feet of meeting space. It is adjacent to the BallhausForum conference center, which is also managed by Dolce and has 32,776 square feet of meeting space.
Dolce, which operates 27 properties in North America and Europe, the majority of them IACC certified or candidates for certification, has been expanding its resort portfolio.
Last summer, Dolce began managing the 439-room Silverado Resort in Napa, Calif., which has a 15,000-square-foot executive conference center and two golf courses. The company will also rebrand and manage the former 349-room Ritz-Carlton Lake Las Vegas, which closed last May and is scheduled to open this month.
The new 148-room Mason Inn with 20,000 square feet of space opened at the Fairfax, Va., campus of George Mason University in October. It is one of 11 IACC-certified properties of Aramark Conference Centers (formerly Aramark Harrison Lodging), which manages 22 properties, including the National Conference Center.
Last summer, IAAC certified its first property in Mexico, the Ixtapan de la Sal Marriott Hotel, Spa & Convention Center in Ixtapa, which has 189 rooms and 9,277 square feet of meeting space.
Early in 2010, the 415-room La Torretta Lake Resort & Spa, located in Montgomery, Texas, and offering 73,000 square feet of meeting space, became an IACC member following a $130 million transformation.
The Hyatt Dulles in Herndon, Va., opened its new IACC-certified executive meeting center in September, offering 18,000 square feet of meeting space and 11,000 square feet of prefunction space. It is the first Hyatt property to become an IACC member.
