There are a few cities around the world with cultures so well-known and unique that even if you’ve never visited, they feel familiar—so familiar, you can visualize them in your mind like you’ve walked their streets before.
Sometimes, your first visit to a new destination might prove everything you thought you knew about it to be false—for better or worse. The best times are when destinations end up being exactly how you hoped they’d be and more.
Reflecting on my own travel adventures, I’ve had a balanced mix of both experiences in cities around the world. There’s one city, though, that stands out for being even more spectacular in real life than it was in my imagination: New Orleans.
My love for the Big Easy started inside a movie theater when I was 9 years old watching Disney’s The Princess and the Frog. I was mesmerized by the colors of the city and how celebration seemed to take place year-round. At that age, I didn’t know buildings so ornate and beautiful existed outside of Europe, and I suddenly had a new interest in brass instruments.
For the past 15 years, New Orleans has ranked high on the list of U.S. cities I hoped to visit one day. (It also appears on Cvent’s 2024 Top 50 Meeting Destinations in North America list, too, coming in at No. 16.)
Thanks to a weekend in NOLA hosted by the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel and sister property New Orleans Marriott, my list of must-visit U.S. cities is one city shorter, and I got to see some of the reasons why New Orleans placed in Cvent’s top 20.
Both my 9-year-old self and the meetings industry journalist in me were far from disappointed.
[Related: Culturally Immersive Group Experiences in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Shreveport-Bossier]
Why New Orleans Is a City ‘Built to Host’
A movie about two frogs falling in love may have taught me a lot of what I know about New Orleans, but the city’s CVB New Orleans & Company taught me that it’s a city “Built to Host.”
The CVB’s meetings marketing efforts are centered around its “Built to Host” campaign, which reflects on 300 years of “meeting, collaborating and creating” in New Orleans and highlights the city’s meetings offerings and welcoming culture.
One thing about New Orleans that makes it “Built to Host” is its 26,000-plus hotel rooms, most of which are within a walkable two-mile radius of downtown and the French Quarter, a historic neighborhood often referred to as the Crown Jewel of New Orleans. More than 2,200 of those rooms can be found at sister properties the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel and New Orleans Marriott, located directly across from each other on opposite sides of Canal Street.
[Related: How New Orleans Celebrates Sustainably, From Culture to Coastline]
Sheraton New Orleans Hotel and New Orleans Marriott
At the end of April, the two hotels hosted a group for the 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival to give us the opportunity to experience what sits at the core of New Orleans’s culture: music and food.
The city is an expert at hosting massive festivals like Jazz Fest. In 2019, New Orleans had 135 permitted festivals, which equates to one festival every two-and-a-half days. With that many gatherings happening year-round in the city, New Orleans knows what it looks like to welcome big groups and is well-prepared to do so.
As a meetings industry journalist, I couldn’t leave without checking out some of the city’s group offerings myself.
With more than 185,000 square feet of meeting space between them—as well as a location only one mile away from the home of America’s largest contiguous-space exhibit hall at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center (NOENMCC)—any meeting planner considering New Orleans should keep both the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel and New Orleans Marriott on their list.
I stayed at the 1,133-room New Orleans Marriott, blocks away from popular French Quarter locations like Jackson Square, the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas and the original Cafe Du Monde, famous for serving the city’s most-iconic beignets since 1862. (I can confirm the hotels are also within walking distance of the only-in-NOLA Lucky Dogs hotdog carts on Bourbon Street for any late-night snacking needs.)
The New Orleans Marriott boasts more than 80,000 square feet of meeting space and can host events for up to 3,000 people. The hotel’s 27,000-square-foot Grand Ballroom is its largest meeting space and features 22-foot ceilings. Our group enjoyed breakfast in a private space on the 41st floor, munching on beignets stuffed with apple pie filling while overlooking the city.
Another 1,110 rooms are available across the street at the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel, a 49-story, 400-foot-tall skyscraper and the sixth-tallest building in New Orleans. The property offers 60 event rooms and nearly 106,000 square feet of space able to accommodate groups of up to 2,800.
My favorite space at the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel was the 8,230-square-foot Armstrong Ballroom, featuring a French Quarter backdrop and space for 800 for a standing reception or 550 banquet-style.
The sister properties were the ideal location to host a group during one of New Orleans’s top festivals.
[Related: How to Plan a Meeting Around One of New Orleans’ Top Festivals]
Creative Culture in New Orleans
New Orleans’s infrastructure may literally make it a city “Built to Host,” but its distinct culture gives the Big Easy a welcoming spirit with an uplifting creative atmosphere that’s unlike anywhere else, and the 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival was the perfect way to experience that.
The festival, which runs over the course of two long weekends (Thursday-Sunday) at the Fair Grounds Race Course, features thousands of musicians, cooks and craftspeople who showcase their music, authentic Louisiana cuisine and artisan crafts from the region to 400,000 attendees annually.
Walking around the festival grounds, I felt surrounded by everything I considered quintessentially New Orleans—things I saw 15 years ago in The Princess and the Frog, like Tiana’s famous bayou gumbo and the fluffy beignets she buried beneath a mountain of powdered sugar.
The movie’s animation style familiarized me with New Orleans’s French- and Spanish-influenced architecture, live oak trees and swampy surroundings, all three of which appeared as common subjects in arts and crafts like paintings, jewelry and sculptures for sale at the festival.
The Princess and the Frog is also responsible for introducing me to the Jazz Age era of New Orleans. At the time I’d first heard it, the movie’s soundtrack was a type of music I’d never listened to before. At this year’s jazz festival, the same type of music drifted in soundwaves from every stage in a way that made it sound proud to be born in New Orleans—and when the sun went down, the music didn’t stop.
Late into the night, New Orleans’ streets were filled with the sounds of brass bands, pretty piano melodies and voices of talented singers. Every musician I came across was compelling enough to actually make me stop in my tracks and take a moment to listen, something that doesn’t happen often in my busy life in the meetings industry.
There’s something about the Big Easy that makes you want to slow down and take it all in, though. Maybe it’s the music, or the way walking into every authentic local restaurant feels like you’re being welcomed inside someone’s home for a family dinner. Perhaps it’s the city’s iconic shotgun houses and their colorful exteriors that bring every neighborhood street to life, or the Mardi Gras beads that hang from tree branches all year round.
Whatever it may be, something about New Orleans is going to stick with you, and when you choose to host a group in such a unique and memorable destination, your event is bound to be memorable, too.
