plenary CONVENE ON SITE Smooth Meetings in Puerto Rico
The Puerto Rico Convention Center evokes its island home.
Puerto Rico + Bigfoot Expo
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Memory Lane Old San Juan makes you feel like you’ve been transported back to Puerto Rico’s Spanish colonial period.
mooth Meetings” is the phrase that the Puerto Rico Convention Bureau has adopted to represent the island as an ideal meetings destina- tion. And if a recent four-day press trip sponsored by the bureau is any indica- tion, Puerto Rico is smooth indeed. A commonwealth of the United States (no passport required for U.S. citizens, and the currency is the U.S. dollar) located less than a four-hour flight from New York City, Puerto Rico is an easy trip. A quick ride from the Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU) took us to our host hotel — the 513-room San Juan Marriott Resort & Stellaris Casino, which recently completed a $2.2-million lobby renovation. Located in San Juan’s Condado district, an area that is an interesting mix of beachfront, urban, and residential, the hotel itself offers beach access, an in-hotel casino, live music in the evenings, and spacious meeting and event facilities. An ideal destination for visitors and locals alike, it’s in close proximity to great nightlife restaurant choices, like Jam Rum Bar & Bistro Moderne, where we enjoyed din- ner our first night. Our second day featured a tour of the
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Puerto Rico Convention Center — con- veniently located to SJU, Old San Juan, and the Condado hotels — which offers 152,700 square feet of exhibit space, the largest ballroom in the Caribbean, and 39,500 square feet of meeting rooms. The architecture and design of the facil- ity represent its island surroundings, with a sweeping roof that mimics the ocean’s waves, and materials and décor that call Puerto Rican history to mind. Currently undergoing massive devel-
opment, the waterfront Puerto Rico Convention Center District is expected to add two more hotel properties as part of a mixed-use urban center called the Bahia Urbana (Urban Bay) project, expanding the district’s inventory to more than 1,800 guest rooms. We then enjoyed a lunch of cantaloupe-mojito gazpacho and pork tenderloin in a spicy tamarind sauce at the adjacent Sheraton Puerto Rico Hotel & Casino. A 503-room, LEED- certified, AAA Four-Diamond resort that opened two-and-a-half years ago, the property features 35,000 square feet of event space. We also visited other nearby prop- erties, including the 416-room Ritz