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Indy convention center will bring in large-scale meetings
The planned expansion of the Indiana Convention Center won’t be finished until 2010, but downtown hotels already are pouring millions of dollars into expanding and upgrading their meeting facilities.
Tourism is a $3.2 billion industry here and more than one third of the visitors are business travelers, said Bob Schultz, spokesman for the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association.
The city likely will host 40% to 50% more large-scale conventions when the Convention Center is expanded, he said.
“It’s a very important part of our city’s economy, and hotels are stepping up efforts to make their environments as enhanced as possible,” Mr Schultz said.
Some city planners have expressed concerns that the downtown hotel market soon will be overcrowded, but that hasn’t deterred most hotels’ expansion plans, reports the city’s Business Journal.
Cities that become successful convention destinations focus on two types of events, Mr Schultz said.
Some, such as the recent National FFA convention, attract thousands of people and book rooms in multiple hotels. But the majority of meetings are smaller events and tend to be based in a single hotel.
Report by David Wilkening
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