Ancient History and Modern Infrastructure in Athens
T
he Athens Convention Bureau (ACB) wasn’t beating around the bush when it came to dem-
onstrating to participants on a recent educational trip that, despite Greece’s economic and political turmoil over the last two years, the country’s beautiful capital city remains a stable, accessible, resourceful meetings destination. Our group landed in Athens on
election day — a clear, hot Sunday afternoon in early May — and, despite surprising returns that removed the two ruling parties from power and set the stage for another election cycle a month later, the city was quiet. There weren’t even any protests or demon- strations in lovely Syntagma Square, just across the street from the Parlia- ment of Greece, and the epicenter of the country’s political life. That left nothing for us to do but
check into the graceful, light-filled Hilton Athens, our first host hotel, and take an Athens Sightseeing Bus tour of the 3,000-year-old city, during which we never knew if the next turn would bring a view of the Aegean Sea to the south or, more likely, the Acropolis in the center of the ancient metropolis, high up on its hill, a mirage shimmering through the ages. Back at the Hilton, we
24 PCMA CONVENE JULY 2012
enjoyed a buffet dinner of classic Greek foods, emphasizing fresh, basic ingre- dients such as olive oil, lemons, cheese, chicken, and lamb, complemented by a selection of excellent local wines. The next morning, our trip began
in earnest. Most of our group were meeting and event planners, so ACB went heavy on business properties. Athens’ hospitality and tourism infra- structure received a massive upgrade in preparation for hosting the 2004 Summer Olympics, and today the city offers nearly 500 hotels with more than 29,000 guest rooms. We visited 13 of those properties — at a variety of sizes and price points, many offering rooftop event space with irresistible views of the ever-present Acropolis. (See “On the Itinerary,” p. 25.) We also toured an impressive portfo-
lio of conference and trade-show venues. The sprawling, 1.5-million-square-foot Megaron Athens International Confer- ence Centre is located in the heart of the city, surrounded by landscaped gardens, terraces, and walking paths; its variety of meeting and event space includes four acoustically perfect auditoriums that can accommodate from 400 to 1,960 people. The Zappeion Conference & Exhibition Centre, opened in 1888, is
Big Dig The Acropolis Museum sits on an archeological site at the foot of its namesake hill.
a gorgeous neoclassical structure that sits on 860,000 square feet of land in the National Garden of Athens, with more than 40,000 square feet of exhibit space and, at its center, a circular open-air atrium ringed with Ionic columns. In a six-floor, late-1920s building opposite Parliament, the B&M Theocharakis Foundation for the Fine Arts & Music offers an intimate series of meeting facilities, including a 180-person audito- rium and three floors of impeccably lit gallery space. A half-hour drive from Athens’ city
center, next to Athens International Airport, we visited the ultra-modern Metropolitan Expo, whose more than half-million square feet of interior meeting space includes both cavernous exhibit halls and human-scale confer- ence rooms. From there we continued to the magnificent Byzantine Estate of George Nassioutzik, carefully built to resemble a centuries-old villa on 17 heav- ily forested hillside acres, with 25,000 square feet of indoor function space and 43,000 square feet of lawns and gardens. And then it was on to the seaside, to the Westin Athens Astir Palace Beach Resort, our second host hotel, and a jewel of the sparking coastline known as the Athe- nian Riviera.