Welcome Reception
Meetings Today LIVE! South kicked off November 16 in Big Easy style, headquartered in a luxury hotel that embodies the festive joie de vivre of New Orleans, complete with a front door opening out onto Bourbon Street and wrought-iron balconies overlooking the most celebratory street in the world.
Held through November 19 at the 483-room Royal Sonesta New Orleans, the hosted-buyer event featured one-on-one buyer/supplier appointments, site inspections and social functions at some of the city’s top meetings properties, along with educational sessions from MPI’s Jessie States and keynote speaker Deborah Gardner, who just set a Guinness World Record as the oldest woman to swim the frigid, 21-mile Catalina Channel.
The opening night reception, held in the quintessentially New Orleans courtyard at the Royal Sonesta, featured the tasty treats that make the city’s cuisine a cultural treasure—think andouille sausage gumbo, two varieties of barbecued oysters and hearty bread pudding drizzled with crème anglaise. The opener kicked off with salutations from the Meetings Today crew along with Walt Leger III, president and CEO of New Orleans & Company and 2025 Meetings Trendsetter, and Dave Bilbe, general manager of the Royal Sonesta New Orleans.
Bilbe told the attendees about the renovation project that will touch all major aspects of the hotel, which opened in 1969 and holds the distinction of being the last new hotel allowed in the French Quarter. The renovation is set to be completed June 1.
Like the “Royal” hotels in the Sonesta brand family, the New Orleans property boasts that signature flair that makes the destination a favorite both for leisure travelers and meetings of all sizes.
“The Royals have a little more personality—in the uniqueness of the properties and destinations—and this is iconic New Orleans, with its courtyard, balconies and the pool deck—with the largest pool in the French Quarter,” Bilbe said.
And fitting for any New Orleans program, even the welcome amenity room drop from Box of Care Gift Company had that unique Big Easy personality, loaded with Mardi Gras beads, a Café du Monde coffee cup and cartridges, Sally’s pralines, Zapp’s New Orleans-style Voodoo Kettle Chips, a cannister of creole seasoning and a mini-bottle of El Guapo Hurricane Cocktail Mixer.
Indeed, the table was set for a signature Crescent City experience.
Day One
With the aforementioned table set at the Welcome Reception, it was time to dig into the main course on the first full day of Meetings Today Live! South.
After breakfast at R’evolution at The Royal Sonesta, attendees gathered in the hotel’s Evangeline Suite to hear frequent Meetings Today Live! educational session leader Jessie States, vice president, consulting for MPI, deliver “What a Waste: Food Waste Prevention for #EventProfs,” a presentation sponsored by Experience Columbia SC.
Hardly a shock to veteran meeting professionals, States provided solid research about just how much food is wasted at meetings and events, and how planners—and attendees—can partner to help lessen the dilemma.
“Food waste is a huge problem in the meetings and events industry, but it’s something we can solve,” States told the audience, estimating that food waste costs the industry up to $2 billion per year aside from the related ethical issues. “An area the size of China is used to grow food that’s wasted in a year.”
Among the many strategies she offered for lessening food waste, States said the industry should consider turning upside down the formula of getting free meeting space in return for spending large on F&B, by paying more for space and having a lower F&B minimum.
“If we could spend more money on the quality of the food rather than the quantity, then we would be a lot better off,” she said, recommending that planners always include banquet managers in pre-con meetings. “As planners, we have a lot of nightmares—this shouldn’t be one of them.”
Following the educational session, the planners and suppliers crossed the hall for the first round of one-on-one appointments, where buyers jumped into 10-minute appointments with sellers to exchange information about their upcoming meeting needs and determine if the supplier could be a good fit.
Hotel Site Inspections
With appointments concluded, the group boarded busses for a short jaunt to Hyatt Regency New Orleans for a site tour and lunch on the pool deck in the warm afternoon sun, complete with an introduction to the property’s F&B bona fides by Executive Chef Kalych Padro, a native of Puerto Rico who has led some of the top catering operations in the meeting and convention hotel business.
Graced with a few offers of employment before coming to the Hyatt Regency, Padro said he chose New Orleans because of the city’s cuisine reputation and history.
“There’s not a lot of places where you can track the recipes 150 years back, but here there is a bunch of them,” Padro offered regarding the food history of New Orleans, noting in particular that the city, and Louisiana, is big on pickled delicacies such as carrots, radishes and even strawberries.
The 1,193-room Hyatt Regency is one of those classic atrium hotels that excels as a meetings property, with everything one needs onsite—a virtual convention city under one roof. The property features a 25,000-square-foot ballroom among its 200,000 square feet of space. Larger groups can even enlist the adjacent Hyatt House New Orleans/Downtown—connected by a second-floor skybridge—to accommodate groups of up to 1,300.
With meeting space on multiple floors, and each of the major meeting floors self-contained by offering its own exhibition hall, ballroom and other space, multiple groups can truly feel like they have the space to themselves in the versatile, open-concept layout. According to the property, its largest exhibition space, the Elite, at more than 48,000 square feet, is the largest of the downtown hotel properties.
Hotel manager Darryl Canon greeted attendees during lunch by sharing that both he and the property were celebrating their 50th birthdays next year, with the hotel embarking on a major renovation of its meeting space and public areas that is set to wrap in 2027.
“After all, we’re in New Orleans, and although we keep to the culture of the city, we’re very modern,” he said. “So, the future is bright.”
Poolside lunch complete, attendees headed back to the host hotel to enjoy a little “meeting white space” via a couple hours of free time before the evening’s festivities rolled out.
And festive they were, with the group gathering in the lobby of The Royal Sonesta and then led by “Revelers,” a Mardi Gras staple in the form of beautiful young women dressed in colorful, lighted plumage—the peacock outfit was a singular success. Brought to the event courtesy of Hosts Global DMC and Paper Doll Promotions, the Revelers led the group in a parade down Bourbon Street to the Marriott New Orleans, which serves up some of the city’s most versatile, modern meeting space along with a banquet team that has won the city’s prestigious Gumbo Cookoff seven years in a row—a true badge of honor for a hotel team going up against top restaurants in the home of gumbo.
“When you’re meeting here, you know you’re in New Orleans,” said Frank Zumbo, hotel area general manager of the New Orleans Marriott, of the quality and authenticity of the hotel’s banquet offering.
Indeed, attendees were heartily impressed by the light dinner served in the 1,333-room Marriott Convention & Resort Network property’s 41st floor Riverview space, which boasts panoramic views of the city. Fresh oysters and shrimp, BLT and chicken-and-waffle sliders plus prime slices of roasted beef, among other savory treats, had mouths watering and left attendees impressed.
The property kicked off an $85 million renovation in July that is scheduled to be completed in September 2027. The project will tackle major improvements to guest-room bathrooms as well as transform double-bed rooms into double queens—among other improvements—and also introduce a new room type in the form of Executive Tower Suites.
Floors two, three, four and five are dedicated meeting floors, with 80% of the hotel’s 86,000-plus square feet of space contained on the second and third floors. The hotel’s Grand Ballroom offers just over 27,000 square feet of space.
As an incentive, qualified groups of 200 or more rooms on peak who book a 2027 meeting by the end of this year will receive a free second-line or Reveler parade for their groups under the Event Experience package.
Marriott has a big presence in the Big Easy, with 4,314 guest rooms and suites (New Orleans Marriott, Sheraton New Orleans Hotel, New Orleans Marriott Warehouse Arts District, JW Marriott New Orleans, Renaissance New Orleans Pere Marquette French Quarter Area Hotel, Renaissance New Orleans Arts Warehouse District Hotel, Ritz-Carlton New Orleans) and 313,844 square feet of meeting space between the properties.
Singing With the Choir
The first full day of Meetings Today Live! South ended on an uplifting, electrifying note after crossing the street from the New Orleans Marriott to the 1,110-room Sheraton New Orleans, its Marriott Bonvoy sister property with 106,000 square feet of meeting space. Its largest space, Napoleon Exposition Hall and Foyer One, tops out at more than 28,000 square feet. The Marriott International sales team sells both properties as part of the French Quarter Connection effort.
Guests riding the escalator up to the Sheraton's second floor Lagniappe room, which overlooks Canal Street and connects to the Waterbury Ballroom, were bowled over by the Joyful Jamalar gospel and soul group, who amped up the energy in the room with gospel favorites that begged the crowd to join in.
Their final number, fittingly, was the New Orleans anthem “When the Saints Go Marching In” as they led a mini-parade of sorts—if you’re not parading in New Orleans, you’re doing it wrong—to wind the evening down as guests sampled a dessert selection that rivaled the F&B acumen of the New Orleans Marriott across the street, including a “Living Garden” carrot and vegetable patch one simply had to see to believe.
Day Two
The last full day of Meetings Today Live! South began and ended with a splash.
Kicking it off was keynote speaker Deborah Gardner, who set a Guinness World Record as the oldest woman to swim the 21-mile Catalina Island Channel—from Catalina to the California mainland—in 66-degree, shark-inhabited waters sans wetsuit.
“Do you ever have that feeling of ‘sink or swim, sink or swim?’ Because in the meetings and events industry we’re constantly dealing with resistance, change and chaos, to where we’re always dealing with multiple currents in everything we do,” she said. “And when it comes to your personal life, one wrong move and you’re washed out to sea. Stop chasing your dreams…catch them!”
Swimming 13 hours through the dead of night reinforced to Gardner the realization that energy is built through momentum.
“Where focus goes, energy goes,” Gardner said. “Keep moving, because when you stop, it’s hard to get going again.”
The featured speaker at three 2025 Meetings Today Live! events, Gardner, whose career began as a broadcaster and has since encompassed meeting planning, hotel sales and speaking, garnered such positive attendee reviews that we’re bringing her back for three more engagements in 2026.
A Historic Site Tour
After the morning keynote and a round of one-on-one buyer-supplier appointments, the group boarded shuttle buses for lunch and a site tour of the historic The Roosevelt New Orleans, A Waldorf Astoria Hotel, which opened in 1893 and embodies everything that is charming and evocative of a luxury hotel from that period. The place was even decked out in its holiday lights, which we learned is a traditional stop for local families to take their Christmas card photos.
Lunch was served in the famed Blue Room, a former music venue that has staged iconic performers such as B.B. King, James Brown, Ella Fitzgerald and even Elvis. The hotel is also home of The Sazerac Bar, which opened in 1949 and gained notoriety when women forced their way in during what was dubbed the “Storming of the Sazerac,” as previously, women were only generally allowed to drink in bars during Mardi Gras. A truly New Orleans spin on women’s liberation!
A Time for Reflection
The afternoon activity found the group visiting The National WWII Museum. New Orleans was the home of the iconic Higgins Boat landing craft that transported troops on amphibious landings in both the European and Pacific theaters of war.
The award-winning museum is both comprehensive and contemplative, detailing the cataclysm of World War II through the stories of the people who fought and suffered in it. Many attendees experienced deep emotions due to the gravity of the exhibitions, myself included. It should be on the shortlist of must-sees when visiting the city both because of the quantity and quality of the exhibits, but also because of the gravity of that world-changing period. It was also truly interesting to see multiple generations completely enthralled by its storytelling and artifacts.
The massive nonprofit museum encompasses seven acres and features seven buildings, along with The Higgins Hotel New Orleans, Curio Collection by Hilton. The venue also offers multiple meeting venues, including the Colonel Battle Barksdale Parade Ground, which is popular for outdoor events such as barbecues. Groups as large as 5,000 can buy out the entire facility and arrange for historian speakers and period entertainment both onsite and off.
The Celebration Goes Into Overdrive
The final day’s activities were a showcase for host DMO New Orleans & Company, which hired ACCENT New Orleans DMC, a member of the Global DMC Network, to leverage its local contacts for some quintessential Crescent City entertainment that provided the “surprise and delight” element any top-flight program saves for the big finish.
Quite the surprise for attendees, the group donned colorful Mardi Gras finery to join a second line band processional right outside the side doors of The Royal Sonesta New Orleans.
While that may have seemed surprising enough, after a few blocks of thumping beats and bold brass—accompanied by colorful Revelers—the real astonishment kicked in when the group was met by an even larger marching band! With much credit to ACCENT New Orleans DMC, the Carver High School marching band proceeded to out-blow the original processional, which also joined in on the fun as the entire group shimmied and swayed down the street, brass blasting, to local favorite Tableau restaurant.
Feeding on a supreme bounty of local delicacies—the duck gumbo and carved prime rib were truly transcendental—attendees sipped and noshed in the restaurant’s upstairs room, which featured a wrought-iron balcony overlooking Jackson Square and Chartres Street. A fortune teller added to the atmosphere, which was elevated even further by the “surprise” appearance of the Betty Winn & One A-Chord gospel singers, who helped bring the evening to an ethereal end in a city that belongs both to the world and the ages.
Thank You to Our Sponsors!
- Royal Sonesta New Orleans
- Hyatt Regency New Orleans
- Sheraton New Orleans Hotel
- New Orleans Marriott
- The Roosevelt New Orleans, A Waldorf Astoria Hotel
- New Orleans & Company
- Experience Columbia SC
- Signature
- The Brandit Agency
- Wandering Maverick Photo+Film
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