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The Group Travel Leader Going on Faith Select Traveler

Meet in Texas to be part of Beaumont’s boom

Courtesy Beaumont CVB


Where is Beaumont, Texas?

The city of 113,000 is in southeast Texas, 20 minutes from the Louisiana border, about 90 minutes east of Houston, 3.5 hours from Austin and 5 hours from San Antonio and Dallas.

How do we get there?
Beaumont is on Interstate 10, a 90-minute drive from Houston’s Bush Intercontinental or William P. Hobby airports. Beaumont’s Southeast Texas Regional Airport has daily flights to Bush Intercontinental.

What types of meeting best suit Beaumont?
Being within five hours of most of Texas and Louisiana makes Beaumont a natural for regional gatherings. The city can handle groups as large as 5,000.

What’s new?

• The MCM Elegante has added a luxury ballroom for upscale events.

• An events center near the heart of downtown is scheduled to open this summer. It will include a 16,875-square-foot arena with a performance stage and catering facilities and a large banquet room for dinners  up to 500. Outdoors, a 14,000-square-foot canopy on the building’s east side will overlook a lake; a smaller canopy will cover a stage. The arena is next to a 12-acre park.

Tell me about the main meeting sites.
• Ford Park Event Center is home to five versatile venues including a 48,000-square-foot exhibit hall with eight adjacent meeting rooms and the attached 9,000-seat Ford Arena. The facility also has 12 softball/youth baseball fields.

• The Neches River is the backdrop for the Beaumont Civic Center Complex in downtown’s cultural district. It has 42,000 square feet of exhibit space and five breakout areas.

• The 281-room MCM Elegante Hotel and Conference Center has more than 22,000 square feet of meeting space and an Aveda day spa. It and the Holiday Inn are the primary meeting hotels.

Tell me about some off-beat sites for off-site gatherings.
• Elegance is coupled with a great view at the Neches Room in the Crockett Street Entertainment District. suited for groups of 20 to 200.

• Guests will enjoy the vintage fire trucks and equipment and the stories of life saving at the Fire Museum of Texas.

• Groups take the spotlight at two historic theaters, the 1920 Jefferson, named Best Restoration by the Texas Downtown Main Street Association, and the Julie Rogers Theatre, a larger and equally historic theater.

For a true taste of Beaumont…
Fusion food is not nouveau cuisine in southeast Texas, long a melting pot for Cajun, cowboy, Mexican and Gulf Coast cooking traditions. For southern cooking with a twist with jazz on the side, try Suga’s Deep South Cuisine and Jazz Bar downtown. Crab cakes, fried green tomatoes and grilled angus ribeye are favorites.Willy Ray’s BBQ, one of the top 50 barbecue joints in the state, according to Texas Monthly.

Tell me about some extra-special CVB services.
A team-building event developed by the CVB for a lawyers organization is now an offering for any group. The Amazing Race Downtown Beaumont starts at Riverfront Park and sends teams racing through the historic city armed with video cameras. The event ends with a dinner at the Fire Museum of Texas; awards are given and videos are screened at a celebratory breakfast the following day.