In your company, are you responsible for booking venues, facilities, restaurants and organizing transportation for meetings and events?
| Choosing the Perfect Space |
As the past two issues of this resource guide have shown, Houston is bursting with thriving and regularly used meeting facilities, ensuring that event planners have a wide range of options in choosing a location. In this issue, our mission was to cover as many bases as possible, not only highlighting Houston’s well-known marquee centers, but to also showcase facilities that may not be immediately associated with corporate events.
Based on feedback from a wide range of BMPs, it’s clear the softening economy has provided them with opportunities to look at event facilities in new ways, including expanding their repertoire of meeting sites. They’re also broadening their network of vendors and resources, which has helped them plan innovative corporate events on a tighter budget.
To assist in these efforts, the following pages of this timely edition of Meetings & Events Houston provide comprehensive listings of every kind of meeting venue imaginable. From ballrooms to entertainment centers, from downtown’s theater district to the Galleria area, all of the Houston region is represented.
This article highlights just a few of the many possibilities when starting to scout for locations. We hope this section of the guide makes your job a little easier and, more importantly, we hope it inspires planners to explore Houston’s extensive array of meeting facilities.
Marquee Facilities
Over the past two decades, the George R. Brown (GRB) Convention Center has been a fixture of the Houston corporate event and tradeshow industry. The convention center features over 1.2 million square-feet of adjustable meeting and exhibition space, making it the largest venue of its kind in central Houston. Trade show associations needing a large amount of space inside the loop should note GRB’s seven exhibit halls that cumulatively consist of 862,000 square-feet of meeting space.
In total, the convention center boasts an impressive 117 meeting rooms, each different in size and seating arrangement, ensuring planners can find the perfect match without having to worry about not having enough space or having too much of it to fully utilize. Along with 17 show offices, eight boardrooms and four conference rooms, highlight meeting rooms include the George Bush Grand Ballroom, which offers 31,500 square-feet of divisible space and an arena that features telescopic theater seating that can accommodate 6,000 people.
The diversity of meeting space makes the GRB a great location for tradeshow satellite events. Just outside of the main exhibit halls, there is 99,000 square-feet of registration space along with a variety of enclosed classrooms, making it possible for your marquee program and satellite events to take place simultaneously.
The arena is perfect for live performances, sporting events and corporate meetings featuring large-scale presentations. A unique feature of the GRB facility is its ability to host outdoor functions through the use of four outer balconies that are each 3,000 square-feet.
To encourage the use of green meetings, the GRB has just added a solar panel to its roof in an attempt to cut the costs of energy. Already a proponent of the environment through its water conservation methods and use of compostable food and beverage containers, the project is one of the largest installations of its kind in the region. The solar panels are expected to increase the percentage of energy the GRB receives from green power, which already stands at an impressive 25 percent.
In addition to its diverse selection of meeting space, the convention center also takes care of event service amenities, including audiovisual setup, booth cleaning, Smart City Networks telecommunications technology, housekeeping duties and the use of a business center that provides copying, shipping and graphic software. The center is also able to accommodate meal-based programs through Aramark, the convention center’s exclusive in-house caterer. It’s important to note that outside food vendors are not allowed.
Downtown isn’t the only place to hold metropolitan-level meetings and events. Houston’s satellite cities feature several well-regarded event facilities with equally flexible meeting space. Among them are the Pasadena Convention Center and the Humble Civic Center and Arena Complex, both profiled in later pages of this section.
With six venues located throughout the city, Regus – Houston, Texas provides meeting space in professional business settings. Each facility is designed to maximize the productivity of your corporate event while costing up to 20 percent less than what a meeting planner would have to pay at a convention hotel. Regus also allows BMPs to work on a flexible schedule by having the option to reserve rooms by the hour, half-day or full-day. If none of those configurations works for you, Regus is more than happy to work with planners on an individual basis to put together the best package for every event.
The six Houston facilities feature a wide variety of meeting rooms, each built to accommodate the demands of specific functions and their respective seating arrangements available. Meeting space types include conference, training, data and interview rooms as well as areas equipped for video and audio conferencing. Most of the rooms are currently being developed to accommodate web conferencing as well.
Function-Specific Meeting Facilities
If you’d prefer something different from the corporate atmosphere and “official-ness” of a large convention center, there are many Houston meeting facilities that can be utilized for business functions, even if that’s not what they’re particularly known for.
Based on feedback from a wide range of BMPs, it’s clear the softening economy has provided them with opportunities to look at event facilities in new ways, including expanding their repertoire of meeting sites. They’re also broadening their network of vendors and resources, which has helped them plan innovative corporate events on a tighter budget.
To assist in these efforts, the following pages of this timely edition of Meetings & Events Houston provide comprehensive listings of every kind of meeting venue imaginable. From ballrooms to entertainment centers, from downtown’s theater district to the Galleria area, all of the Houston region is represented.
This article highlights just a few of the many possibilities when starting to scout for locations. We hope this section of the guide makes your job a little easier and, more importantly, we hope it inspires planners to explore Houston’s extensive array of meeting facilities.
Marquee Facilities
Over the past two decades, the George R. Brown (GRB) Convention Center has been a fixture of the Houston corporate event and tradeshow industry. The convention center features over 1.2 million square-feet of adjustable meeting and exhibition space, making it the largest venue of its kind in central Houston. Trade show associations needing a large amount of space inside the loop should note GRB’s seven exhibit halls that cumulatively consist of 862,000 square-feet of meeting space.
In total, the convention center boasts an impressive 117 meeting rooms, each different in size and seating arrangement, ensuring planners can find the perfect match without having to worry about not having enough space or having too much of it to fully utilize. Along with 17 show offices, eight boardrooms and four conference rooms, highlight meeting rooms include the George Bush Grand Ballroom, which offers 31,500 square-feet of divisible space and an arena that features telescopic theater seating that can accommodate 6,000 people.
The diversity of meeting space makes the GRB a great location for tradeshow satellite events. Just outside of the main exhibit halls, there is 99,000 square-feet of registration space along with a variety of enclosed classrooms, making it possible for your marquee program and satellite events to take place simultaneously.
The arena is perfect for live performances, sporting events and corporate meetings featuring large-scale presentations. A unique feature of the GRB facility is its ability to host outdoor functions through the use of four outer balconies that are each 3,000 square-feet.
To encourage the use of green meetings, the GRB has just added a solar panel to its roof in an attempt to cut the costs of energy. Already a proponent of the environment through its water conservation methods and use of compostable food and beverage containers, the project is one of the largest installations of its kind in the region. The solar panels are expected to increase the percentage of energy the GRB receives from green power, which already stands at an impressive 25 percent.
In addition to its diverse selection of meeting space, the convention center also takes care of event service amenities, including audiovisual setup, booth cleaning, Smart City Networks telecommunications technology, housekeeping duties and the use of a business center that provides copying, shipping and graphic software. The center is also able to accommodate meal-based programs through Aramark, the convention center’s exclusive in-house caterer. It’s important to note that outside food vendors are not allowed.
Downtown isn’t the only place to hold metropolitan-level meetings and events. Houston’s satellite cities feature several well-regarded event facilities with equally flexible meeting space. Among them are the Pasadena Convention Center and the Humble Civic Center and Arena Complex, both profiled in later pages of this section.
With six venues located throughout the city, Regus – Houston, Texas provides meeting space in professional business settings. Each facility is designed to maximize the productivity of your corporate event while costing up to 20 percent less than what a meeting planner would have to pay at a convention hotel. Regus also allows BMPs to work on a flexible schedule by having the option to reserve rooms by the hour, half-day or full-day. If none of those configurations works for you, Regus is more than happy to work with planners on an individual basis to put together the best package for every event.
The six Houston facilities feature a wide variety of meeting rooms, each built to accommodate the demands of specific functions and their respective seating arrangements available. Meeting space types include conference, training, data and interview rooms as well as areas equipped for video and audio conferencing. Most of the rooms are currently being developed to accommodate web conferencing as well.
Function-Specific Meeting Facilities
If you’d prefer something different from the corporate atmosphere and “official-ness” of a large convention center, there are many Houston meeting facilities that can be utilized for business functions, even if that’s not what they’re particularly known for.
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If accepted, your submission will be edited for length and clarity. There is no monetary payment if your item is used; instead, you can publicize yourself through a five-line biography with your contact information that will appear at the end of the article.
Send submissions to
editorial@MeetingPlannerResources.org. We will contact you if your submission is chosen.