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The Group Travel Leader Going on Faith Select Traveler

Big Opportunities for Small Meetings

Small Meeting, Big Opportunities

Meetings or conferences with fewer than 100 attendees are perfectly positioned to take advantage of all sorts of options — venues, lodging, tours, shows and more — that large groups are simply too big to enjoy.

“There’s definitely a lot more available to the smaller groups and to the small, small groups of maybe 15 to 20 [people],” said Dede Daigle, sales director at the Atlantic Oceanside hotel in Bar Harbor, Maine.

The Witham Hotel Group operates 15 hotels in Maine and one in Massachusetts, six of which have meeting space. But the 153-room Atlantic Oceanside is the Witham property with the most meeting space and can host meetings for about 250 people, Daigle said.

A “fairly big market for us” is meetings of 100 or fewer people. “It’s about 75 percent of what we do,” Daigle said. The rest of the hotel’s events are in the 100-person to 200-person range.

Small meetings, Daigle said, can take advantage of hotel offerings such as lobster bakes, nature cruises and fishing trips that aren’t available to groups with more than 100 people. Very small meetings can stay at the hotel’s Willows Mansion, a historic summer home with 13 guest rooms and suites that has ocean views and terraced gardens.

“It’s nestled right down on the water’s edge, even though there are hotels right behind you, you feel  like it’s just you and the water,” Daigle said.

Some of the best meeting venues can’t be found in a convention center or conference hotel. They’re in museums, parks and historic sites, such as White Oak Hall, a newer conference building that can accommodate about 125 people on the historic site of Fort Roberdeau near a Hoove, the westernmost American Revolution site in the country, Ickes said.

“[Fort Roberdeau Park] is extremely interesting and holds a wealth of history, outdoor walking trails and a lot of educational programming,” Ickes said.

The Altoona Railroaders Memorial Museum can hold up to 100 people for receptions but also has a 63-seat auditorium-style theater for presentations. The visitors center at Horseshoe Curve, the only place in the world that has railroad tracks in the shape of a horseshoe, can host outdoor receptions for 150 people or about 75 people indoors, Ickes said.

In Indiana, the Clark-Floyd Counties CTB has venues such as Wooded Glen, a 50-room lodge-style retreat and conference center, as well as Joe Huber’s Family Farm and Restaurant, and Huber’s Orchard, Winery and Vineyard, two different businesses owned by the same family, each with dining options and rental halls, Kane said. The Huber winery also offers group tours.

The Clark-Floyd Counties CTB once got a call from a local university that was “looking for a different style of lodging” for its meeting, Kane said. The university wanted quaint and charming, not bland and blasé. The meeting was small enough that the CTB was able to help the group book several bed-and-breakfasts that were close to each other, Kane said.

Small meetings have plenty of options in Myrtle Beach that “lend themselves to less traditional or more intimate meetings,” DaRoja said.

Unlike larger meetings, small meetings can take a private cruise on the Barefoot Princess Riverboat or charter a fishing boat, she said. Small events can book a private suite at a Myrtle Beach Pelicans baseball game, do a scavenger hunt at Brookgreen Gardens or use the NASCAR pit crew challenge at Myrtle Beach Speedway as a team-building challenge.