Awaiting a renaissance of the events industry, Explore St. Louis turned to Michelangelo to drive customers to the America’s Center.

A financial incentive program created by the Utah Office of Tourism paid off with the booking of 30 events to be held in Salt Lake City in 2021. Visit Salt Lake projects that the events will fill 28,000 room nights, a remarkable feat as the country battles through the pandemic.

Since the pandemic brought the live events industry to a screeching halt one year ago, convention center staff across the country have been working overtime to find creative ways to keep their spaces occupied and employees working.

As the heart of South Padre Island’s meeting and event business, the South Padre Island Convention Center is accustomed to hosting an array of year-round corporate and consumer events. These range from fishing tournaments to quilt shows to college basketball tournaments. 

Last year wasn’t exactly a great one for Nashville. The popular music and events destination not only suffered fallout from the pandemic, but also a Christmas morning suicide bombing that injured eight people, severely damaged more than 40 buildings in a historic downtown district and crippled telecommunication systems throughout the Southeast for days.

The city of Chicago is getting ready to lure back meetings and convention business in 2021 with a little help from digital technology. Launched Jan.

As the pandemic continues to keep many event facilities closed or under-utilized, convention centers across the U.S. are finding new life and purpose by transforming their empty exhibit halls into mass state-run COVID-19 vaccinations sites. Here are several major facilities that are providing this valuable community service, helping to save lives and return the country — including the meetings and convention industry — to pre-pandemic times as quickly as possible.

In cities across the United States, as well as south of the border, hotels and resorts are under construction, coming online or completing remodel projects. The work comes just in time to start luring group business as the hospitality industry begins its recovery. Take a look:

In December, Indianapolis welcomed the Bottleworks Hotel, a new 139-key boutique property occupying the top two floors of the historic Coca-Cola Bottling Co. administration building in the city’s downtown.

If any destination knows about comebacks, it’s Puerto Rico.

“We have a Pd.D. in recovery,” joked Brad Dean, CEO of Discover Puerto Rico. “We’ve seen this movie before.”

Since the pandemic took hold in the U.S. last Spring, more and more convention centers have been demonstrating their commitment to protecting health and safety in the “new abnormal” by achieving GBAC STAR, a cleaning, disinfection and infectious disease prevention accreditation program designed for facilities of all types and sizes.