Plan Your Meetings

Watch for:

• Houston Pavilions, an entertainment, retail and office development, opened four blocks from the George R. Brown Convention Center. Tenants will include Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar, House of Blues, bowling alley/nightclub Lucky Strike, McCormick & Schmick’s, Yao’s Restaurant & Bar, and the Red Cat Jazz Café.
• The Hyatt Regency Houston is undergoing a $35 million renovation of its 960 guest rooms, scheduled for completion in October 2008. Improvements will include a Shula’s fine-dining steak house and expanded meeting space. Thirty guest rooms on the sixth floor will be converted into nine meeting rooms and three high-tech boardrooms; the hotel currently has 64,000 square feet of flexible meeting space, including a 28,000-sq. ft. exhibit hall and a 16,000-sq. ft. ballroom.
• A $40 million, 152-room Aloft Hotel will open by the Galleria in summer 2009.
• Element Houston Vintage Park is scheduled to open on January 1, 2009 with 123 rooms and more than 800 square feet of meeting space.
• The Woodlands Resort & Conference Center will undergo a $50 million transformation and expansion project to include the renovation of its 60,000 square feet of meeting space, and a build-out of 158 new guestrooms, a lazy river, a new entrance and a fine-dining steakhouse. Construction is expected to be complete by late 2009.
• Five new light rail rapid transit lines are planned for the city, to be completed in 2012.
• BLVD Place, scheduled to open in 2009, is a 600,000-sq. ft. mixed-use development being built near the Galleria with office space, retail, restaurants and a luxury 300-room hotel with 80 condominium units.
• The Children’s Museum of Houston is undergoing an expansion to double its size to 83,000 square feet by 2009.
• The Asia House, a $30 million Asian arts and entertainment venue in the Museum District, is expected to open in 2010 by the Holocaust Museum.
• Buzz on the street is that a big conversion project is planned for the Astrodome, but no details have been announced yet.
• The Hilton University of Houston Hotel and Conference Center is scheduled to undergo a $12 million renovation.
• The $50 million expansion of the Woodlands Resort and Conference Center is expected to be complete by late 2009. Upgrades will include 158 new guest rooms, a new lobby and restaurant, and 60,000 square feet of refurbished meeting space.
• Candlewood Suites Houston Park Row opened with 102 rooms, complimentary Internet access, a 800-sq. ft. conference room and a 24-hour fitness center.

Want group dining?

Carmelo’s Restaurant serves Sicilian-style Italian cuisine to groups ranging from eight to 300; entertainment is provided by a strolling street musician, and venues include multiple wine rooms, a Roman aqueduct-themed bar and Italian piazzas. Brennan’s of Houston brings a touch of New Orleans to its wine dinners; several banquet spaces, including a patio room, two ballrooms and a wine room are available for parties of 16 to 130. The Capital Grille is a high-end steakhouse with an award-winning wine list.

Want to pamper attendees?

La Colombe d’Or is the world’s smallest luxury hotel, with six suites available in the historic mansion, and one- and two-bedroom villa suites arranged around a courtyard; event space is available in its European-style wild game restaurant and elegant Le Grande Salon ballroom. The Magnolia Hotel makes attendees feel as if they are doing business in the fabulous home of wealthy friends, with complimentary hot breakfast buffets, evening cocktail hours, and milk and cookies service from 8 to 10 p.m. Its library is a cool option for small meetings, and more traditional meeting space is available upstairs. Other memorable perks at local boutiques include a three-level penthouse suite (Hotel Icon), rooftop event and banquet space (Hotel Alden), and private poolside cabanas (Hotel ZaZa); boutiques also tend to have the city’s hottest restaurants and bars. Five-Diamond properties, such as the St. Regis and Four Seasons, offer more traditional luxury amenities. Nearby, there is a cruise port in Galveston for pre- and post-event trips.

Want sports-themed events?

Create a field-level banquet inside the Astrodome. Hold a reception on one of the concourse levels at Reliant Stadium, or reserve a private skybox for VIP seating. Minute Maid Park has a conference center with video teleconferencing and state-of-the-art audiovisual equipment as well as restaurant venues. Sam Houston Race Park has 19 luxury suites, and banquet and exhibit space; groups meeting on game days get their company name in lights on the tote board and in the program.

Want to team-build?

Let groups feel like pro baseball players during batting practice or a softball game at Minute Maid Park. Take groups on bayou kayak or canoe trips from Allen’s Landing, where the city was founded, to Houston’s historic downtown. At the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, attendees can create alongside local artists.

Want customized training seminars?

Third Coast Comedy offers corporate “Life is Improv” workshops, and can facilitate or role-play at training seminars. University of Houston Corporate Training creates customized training seminars on topics such as leadership and management skills, professional development and cross-cultural communication. The Holocaust Museum Houston’s Cultural Bridges program teaches future leaders the value of diversity and inclusion with roundtables and seminars that can be adapted for private groups.

Want to keep your group focused?

In the Greater Houston area, planners will find conference center resorts with high-end accommodations, and enough on-site dining, entertainment and amenities to keep groups content, but contained. Northwest Forest Conference Center is an 80-acre, 76-room resort a half-hour from the city; special facilities include a replica of the Alamo, a two-story Spanish hacienda, a log dining room, an outdoors ropes course and a software training room. The 240-room South Shore Harbour Resort, located half-way between Houston and Galveston Island by Space Center Houston, has more than 30,000 square feet of conference space overlooking the marina at Clear Lake; the resort also can help planners arrange golf trips, dinner cruises and fishing charters.

Want creative venues?

Space Center Houston offers reception and presentation space, space mission simulations, souvenir photos and space-related exhibits. Progressive events through Project Row Houses’ unusual galleries and artist studios expose attendees to local artists and exhibits exploring the African-American experience. Houston has several museums offering reception and meeting space, including the Menil Collection (and its Rothko Chapel), and the Houston Museum of Natural Science (check out its Gems and Minerals Collection room). The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts can do seated dinners on-stage, and has special Monday-Friday corporate rates. Large groups of up to 2,500 attendees can buy out the Houston Zoo for the night; the zoo also offers behind-the-scenes tours, unusual dining facilities and indoor meeting space.