Meetings Today LIVE! South attendees spent three days at the Hilton Marco Island Beach Resort and Spa from October 28-31, 2018. The event's planner and supplier guests made up the first meetings group to visit the Southwest Florida resort as it completes a $60 million transformation.

The Communication Network’s annual conference, ComNet18, was scheduled for October 10-12, 2018, at San Francisco’s Westin St. Francis and then UNITE HERE’s Marriott strike abruptly entered into the equation. Gibbons had to react fast, and in the end decided to risk the attrition hit by allowing attendees to cancel out their rooms while booking in other venues for meeting space and guest rooms.

Meetings Today LIVE! South on Marco Island, Fla., kicked off Sunday night with an outdoor party on the Great Lawn at Hilton Marco Island Beach Resort & Spa, commemorating both the start of the three-day event and the grand reopening of the resort following extensive renovations.

Orlando's Orange County Convention Center is moving forward with a $605 million campus improvement plan. The project will bring expansions and new meeting and exhibit space in the North and South concourses, further increasing the center’s seven million square feet of total function space.

Humans weren’t made to live without natural light. Studies continue to show that exposure to natural light has increased benefits. It’s no wonder that companies around the world are choosing to host meetings and events in sunlit spaces.

The public profile of LGBT+ people in the meetings industry has grown by leaps and bounds in just the past decade and a half, advancing from what some early adopters describe as the “secret handshake” days to a consolidation into the LGBT Meeting Professionals Association (LGBT MPA).

Indianapolis’ Capital Improvement Board of Managers (CIB) unanimously approved moving forward with negotiations in developing a 300,000-square-foot expansion to the Indiana Convention Center and two Hilton-branded convention hotels—600 rooms and 800 rooms—on the site of Pan Am Plaza.

Call it a tale of two countries. In Canada, U.S.-based meeting planners and organizations can tap a variety of Canadian government programs and select companies to help them expedite the cross-border customs process for shipping materials to their north of the border events. In Mexico, though, the process is more convoluted, so tapping into the experience of planners who have been there and done that is advice well taken.

Shrinking budgets and long hours lead the list of event planning challenges/worries, according to a new survey conducted by Event Manager Blog Editor Julius Solaris and released during his "Event Trends for 2019” educational session at IMEX America in Las Vegas. During the presentation Solaris also highlighted a number of event planning trends to watch for in the year ahead and some practical advice for meeting planners.

Three major meetings industry associations—MPI, IAEE and SITE—have banded together as the Global MICE Collaborative to provide resources for emerging destinations that want to tap into the MICE (meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions) market.