Meetings Today LIVE! Corporate/Incentive gave attendees a peek at paradise October 27-30 in The Bahamas, and during one-on-one appointments with planners, two words kept coming up to describe the event: “intimate” and “relaxed.”
The perfect Meetings Today LIVE! incentive event combines both seamlessly, giving planners the opportunity to meet face-to-face with some of the top suppliers in the incentives sector and pairing the business experience with a myriad of activities offered at our host property, Atlantis Paradise Island.
At Meetings Today LIVE! events, there’s always time for work and play. Here’s how our attendees experienced both during Meetings Today LIVE! Corporate/Incentive on Paradise Island.
Opening Reception
Meetings Today LIVE! Corporate/Incentive came in HOT at Atlantis Paradise Island with an opening night welcome reception on the 600-acre property’s Royal Deck, where the iconic Royal Bridge Suite, which has hosted celebrities including Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jackson, stood as the focal point of the view from our dinner tables.
The Royal Deck is just one of Atlantis Paradise Island’s outdoor group venues, which total 300,000 square feet and serve as an ideal option for evening gatherings and dinners that allow groups to enjoy the island’s year-round perfect weather as the sun sets.
Dinner came with a show, of course, that gave attendees a taste of Bahamian culture and included a fire dancer twirling flaming batons, an impressive limbo demonstration and a grand finale performance full of color featuring traditional Bahamian Junkanoo music and costumes.
If there’s one thing any incentive event should prioritize right now, it’s destination experience. Incentive qualifiers are increasingly prioritizing authentic local experiences that showcase a destination’s culture, as reported in this year’s Incentive Travel Index (ITI) results, and by partnering with the Nassau and Paradise Island Promotion Board, Meetings Today was able to ensure our incentive event delivered not only something memorable, but something truly representative of the Bahamas.
Planners also got to tour the iconic Atlantis Paradise Island Bahamas, a 25-year-old resort property that’s topped travelers’ bucket lists since it opened. Attendees were hosted in the Royal, the property’s centerpiece hotel featuring the newly transformed East and West Towers that drew inspiration in design from its location on Paradise Island.
Additional brands on the property include The Reef, offering an elevated lifestyle experience and the upscale amenities of residential-style suites, and The Cove, a luxury boutique property with adults-only amenities.
Atlantis Paradise Island also features more than 500,000 square feet of meetings and events space, including the 50,000-square-foot Imperial Ballroom, with space for up to 4,000; the 24,804-square-foot Grand Ballroom, which is divisible into seven smaller rooms and served as our venue for one-on-one appointments; and Cove Beach, an exclusive setting boasting views of the turquoise Bahamian waters.
During the event, Meetings Today’s Taylor Smith, content developer, destinations and features, had the opportunity to chat with two representatives from our host property, Andrew Neubauer, account director, and Ted Adderley, VP of sales, to learn more about what’s new at Atlantis Paradise Island, what they’re seeing in the incentive market and why Atlantis Paradise Island is the perfect place to host your next incentive event.
Day One
Meetings Today LIVE! Corporate/Incentive attendees were up with the sun on day one of our event to grab a quick bite at Casa D’Angelo before heading to an informative, and quite fun, education session led by Society for Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE) CEO Annette Gregg.
Gregg’s presentation dove into data from this year’s ITI, which was released during IMEX America earlier in October and points to an exciting year ahead for the incentives sector. Budgets are increasing to keep up with inflation, and while some planners are finding it necessary to cut back on spending in certain areas, overall, the outlook remains positive. (Read more about highlights from this year’s ITI now!)
Following our first morning of one-on-one appointments, planners departed for Margaritaville Beach Resort, conveniently located on the harbor front steps away from historic Bay Street and the popular Straw Market.
The property features two towers with 155 oceanfront rooms, including 12 suites, all with balconies overlooking the water, as well as 40,000 square feet of meeting space. Adjacent to the resort tower at Margaritaville Beach Resort is One Particular Harbor, offering an elevated residential lifestyle experience with Caribbean-chic decor.
“A timeless island haven,” the 100-plus-year-old British Colonial Nassau welcomed planners for a quick site tour of the newly renovated property. The timeless hotel offers 288 guest rooms and more than 18,000 square feet of meeting space as well as historic charm and a century’s-worth of stories to tell.
Our evening wrapped at The Ocean Club, A Four Seasons Resort, where scenes from the iconic James Bond movie Casino Royale were filmed in the early 2000s, and where The Beatles recorded snippets of their second feature film, Help!. The 107-key property features 90 guest rooms, 12 suites and five two-bedroom plunge pool and residential villas.
The Ocean Club offers more than 20,000 square feet of meeting and event space, including the sprawling Versailles Gardens, an intimate Executive Boardroom and the 2,408-square-foot Beach Deck, where Meetings Today LIVE! Corporate/Incentive attendees enjoyed dinner overlooking the water as cruise ships sailed by.
Wondering whether to plan your next incentive event in the Bahamas? Meetings Today’s Taylor Smith spoke with George Brice, VP of the Nassau Paradise Island Promotion Board, to get the inside scoop on what makes the destination an ideal choice for groups and how working with the NPIPB can help planners execute an incentive event that delivers an authentic destination experience.
Day Two
The first day of Meetings Today LIVE! Corporate/Incentive may have been all work, but the second day was all play.
The morning kicked off with breakfast at Atlantis Paradise Island and an engaging education session delivered by Arlene Nash Ferguson, director of Educulture Bahamas and a passionate advocate for the culture and history of the islands.
Ferguson’s presentation touched on the beauty of the 700 islands in the archipelago, and how 75% of them are underwater. She mentioned how NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly described the islands as “the most beautiful place from space” during his 2015 mission circling the globe for a year, highlighted some cultural aspects that stem from British influence and explained traditional medicinal practices such as curing asthma by spiking a tree above someone’s head or dripping the juice from a white crab claw into someone’s ear to cure an ear ache.
She also shared some Bahamian dialect with the group, such as “kapoonkle,” a word Bahamians use “when ‘drunk’ doesn’t cut it,” Ferguson said while laughing.
We wanted to make sure our attendees had the true incentive experience, so following a second round of one-on-one appointments in the morning, planners had the opportunity to choose one of three activities to fill their afternoon.
One group opted to enjoy the award-winning Mandara Spa at Atlantis Paradise Island, which “brings together ancient Balinese healing touches, traditional European therapies and natural elements Indigenous to The Bahamas,” according to the spa’s website.
Mandara Spa features warm and cold plunge pools, steam and sauna rooms, and an aromatherapy room in the women’s area. Planners had the option to choose which treatment they desired, with many picking either massages or facials.
Another group had the opportunity to play a round at the Ocean Club Golf Course, an 18-hole, par-72 championship course that spreads across 7,100 yards (21,300 feet) on Paradise Island’s Oceanside peninsula. (Even the best of players had a challenge facing the nearly 17 mph winds we experienced!)
The third group chose to spend their time in the water at 14-acre Dolphin Cay at Atlantis Paradise Island, one of the largest and most sophisticated marine habitats and animal rescue-rehabilitation facilities in the world. Employees at the animal protection organization care for dolphins and sea lions study their behavior and offer educational opportunities for groups and visitors.
Each visit to Dolphin Cay also supports the Atlantis Blue Project Foundation, a nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization that was founded in 2005 “with the mission of saving sea species and their extraordinary habitats throughout The Bahamas and surrounding Caribbean seas,” according to the Blue Project website.
After an afternoon of adventure, Meetings Today LIVE! Corporate/Incentive attendees gathered in Atlantis Paradise Island’s Imperial Ballroom for one last evening together full of live music, delicious food and lots—and lots—of dancing.
Meet the Mentee
As part of a new mentorship initiative between Meetings Today and the University of Iowa’s event management certificate program, we’ve sponsored a student attendee at each of our live events this year.
Lorelei Bahl, a recent University of Iowa grad, joined us during our Meetings Today LIVE! Corporate/Incentive event in the Bahamas, and after her three-day experience networking with planners, getting their advice for how to start her career in meetings and events and experiencing what the industry has to offer, Bahl said she’s inspired to pursue a path in the incentives sector.
“I've learned a lot about just what incentive events are. I really didn't have a grasp on that before,” Bahl said. “I had heard of incentives, and I knew they were clearly a very interesting part of the industry just from their name and hearing about people getting those opportunities, but knowing what these events really are, and asking a lot of the planners, ‘What do you plan at these types of events? What are your goals here?’ And same with the suppliers, ‘What are you trying to do here?’ Just learning the intricacies of that type of thing.
“I think I'm going to take away that I might want to go into this kind of event planning,” Bahl continued. “Incentives, specifically.”
The advice she received from planners and suppliers alike, Bahl said, is exactly what she needed to get started.
“I got a lot of good advice on where to start in the events field,” Bahl said. “A lot of people said hotels are a great place to start for a few years. Some people said, ‘No, just jump right into exactly what you want to do.’ And I got reasonings behind all of those things, so I feel like I get to take that into the beginning of my career.”
Thanks to Our Sponsors
- Atlantis Paradise Island Bahamas
- Nassau Paradise Island Promotion Board
- Island Destination Services
- The Ocean Club, A Four Seasons Resort
- Margaritaville Beach Resort Nassau
- The Brandit Agency
- Maui Jim Sunglasses
- Wandering Maverick Photo + Film
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