Baton Rouge and Shreveport-Bossier City are nearly four hours apart—the former is located in the southeastern portion of Louisiana, while the latter is in the northwestern corner of the state—but both of these Southern staples are embracing their individual culture to ramp up the meetings experience.
With their array of cultural off-sites, annual festivals and local restaurants, combined with the right amount of southern hospitality and overall affordability, it’s no wonder Baton Rouge and Shreveport-Bossier continue to earn repeat group business, year after year.
Baton Rouge’s Cultural Boom
Louisiana’s capital city combines political savvy with colorful culture and a college-town atmosphere, making it a great place for attendees to take care of business and also have a good time.
“There is so much development going on in downtown Baton Rouge—it’s in the midst of an economic and cultural boom,” says Christy Chachere, communications coordinator with Visit Baton Rouge. “In recent years we’ve seen the addition of a dozen new clubs and restaurants, many of which are located in beautiful, historic buildings, resulting in a historic-yet-fresh feel to the area.”
Chachere says that Baton Rouge’s ideal group size for a larger event is 1,500 delegates, with an emphasis on regional, association, corporate, sports and multicultural meetings and conventions.
The Baton Rouge River Center is the city’s 200,000-square-foot entertainment facility, which holds a 12,000-seat arena, alongside nearly 24,000 square feet of meeting space across 13 rooms. Popular meeting hotels include the Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center (over 20,000 square feet), Belle of Baton Rouge Casino & Hotel (over 25,000 square feet) and Renaissance Baton Rouge (13,000 square feet of meeting and event space).
Baton Rouge is also home to Louisiana State University (LSU), and like many college towns, it features a variety of interesting off-site venues and entertainment options for groups to enjoy.
For cultural enthusiasts, the 125,000-square-foot Shaw Center for the Arts houses a range of event venues that include the LSU Museum of Art, The Manship Theatre and the River Terrace. The Shaw Center’s event venues can accommodate smaller meetings and receptions all the way up to groups of 400 or more.
Capitol Park Museum is part of the Louisiana State Museum network, a collection of National Historic Landmarks and architecturally significant structures, with two permanent galleries showcasing the state’s history and culture, as well as a third for traveling exhibitions. The award-winning structure includes more than 10,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor space for up to 750.
The Louisiana Art & Science Museum offers a mix of historical and scientific exhibitions, planetarium shows, hands-on galleries and interactive performances that groups can enjoy, alongside rental space for larger events of up to 500 attendees that incorporates the aforementioned facilities and activities.
If your attendees would like to explore the historic side of Baton Rouge while meeting in a unique venue, the USS Kidd—a WWII Fletcher-class destroyer—features a 100-seat auditorium and offers tours. Additionally, the Old Louisiana Governor’s Mansion and Old State Capitol are on the National Register of Historic Places, showcasing stunning architecture and elegant space for smaller groups.
Chachere also recommends planners look into LSU’s Rural Life Museum and Windrush Gardens, or one of Baton Rouge’s iconic plantations such as the Magnolia Mound Plantation House, the Houmas House Plantation and Gardens, and the Nottoway Plantation and Resort (think groups in the 250-300 range for most).
And if your attendees are just looking to unwind or grab a bite to eat after a day of meetings, downtown Baton Rouge has a lot going on within its North Boulevard Town Square, a local gathering spot that hosts family-friendly events, festivals and other activities on a weekly basis. The city also boasts a very strong restaurant scene.
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Shreveport-Bossier Has ‘All the Fixins’
Shreveport-Bossier City is closer in distance to Dallas than it is to New Orleans or Baton Rouge, which means groups will discover a mix of Texas and Louisiana culture when visiting the area. The end result—attendees can just as easily track down a plate of barbecue brisket as they can a cooler full of fresh crawfish.
David Bradley, vice president of sales and services at the Shreveport-Bossier Convention & Tourist Bureau, who previously resided on the East Coast, quickly learned the city takes its food seriously.
“Oh, they like to feed you in the South,” Bradley says. “You know they tell me the biggest word you hear down here is ‘y’all,’ but the biggest sentence I hear is ‘Did ya eat?’”
This also explains the Shreveport-Bossier area’s love of festivals, as they often have some sort of foodie component. For instance, Mudbug Madness is the area’s annual Cajun festival and crawfish boil that started in 1984 and takes place each year over Memorial Day weekend in Shreveport’s Festival Plaza.
The two-day Mudbug Madness event has grown into one of Louisiana’s largest and most popular festivals, drawing up to as many as 56,000 people in one day. And it’s not uncommon for groups to try to schedule a meeting to line up with the festival, assuming attendees don’t mind chowing down on some mudbugs (or observing).
“A pretty fierce crawfish eating contest goes on throughout that weekend,” Bradley says.
Additional festivals and events held in Shreveport-Bossier City include the Red River Revel Arts Festival, the Louisiana Film Prize (and accompanying Music Prize) and a massive Mardi Gras celebration, among others. But Shreveport-Bossier is more than just festivals and celebration, it also takes its meetings business seriously.
“Our mayors on both the Shreveport and Bossier sides are extremely engaged in the meeting and tourism business—we ask them to come out and greet a group, they’re out,” Bradley says.
Bradley states that corporate and association meetings remain a strong source of business for the area, whether state or national, but he also has seen a big uplift in the religious and military reunion markets. As far as ideal group size goes, he says that Shreveport-Bossier works best with anywhere from 50 to 200 people for an individual hotel and around 1,200, and “maybe 1,000 rooms peak,” for a citywide.
The 350,000-square-foot Shreveport Convention Center, along with its adjoining 313-room Hilton Hotel Shreveport, remains a top spot for larger tradeshows and conventions, alongside seven casino resorts that include Sam’s Town Hotel & Casino, Margaritaville Resort Casino and Horseshoe Bossier City.
Move beyond the casinos and hotels and planners will find a number of interesting off-sites, ranging from facilities showcasing local area history to small boutique art shops and music venues (see the On the Scene sidebar, page 106).
Shreveport Municipal Memorial Auditorium, located on Elvis Presley Avenue, is an Art Deco building constructed in the 1920s that was home to The Louisiana Hayride, a radio and later television broadcast, which helped jumpstart the careers of Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. Its auditorium seats more than 3,000 people and its Grand Ballroom can hold 250 standing, 160 theater-style and 112 for a banquet. A Backstage Music Tour is also available for smaller groups with advance notice.
Sci-Port: Louisiana’s Science Center is another popular site for events and offers a Science is Fun tour for groups of up to 100, plus the entire facility can be rented out to groups after regular business hours.
Meanwhile, Great Raft Brewing, founded in 2013, is arguably the top brewery in town—it was recently voted as the top brewery in Louisiana by Thrillist.com—and is another can’t miss for attendees.
