Fayetteville
Because of its proximity to Bentonville, Fayetteville is often considered part of the Wal-Mart sphere of Arkansas. But as home to the University of Arkansas, it has a distinct local culture all its own.
“The one thing that separates this area from the rest of the state is the entrepreneurial spirit,” said Collin Watson Brunner, director of convention and sports market sales for the Fayetteville Convention and Visitors Bureau. “There are start-ups for start-ups.” And some of the more innovative are also boons to meeting planners. Terra Studios, an art center and park filled with murals, sculptures and other art from more than 100 local artists can host groups for lunch, workshops or team building.
But if Fayetteville’s entrepreneurial spirit comes from its university, its artistic energy may come from its natural setting. The city has been honored as the host city for the America in Bloom Symposium and is home to an award-winning farmers market that draws 70 vendors to the historic town square three times a week. Fayetteville’s 42-acre Botanical Gardens of the Ozarks can host up to 1,000 people for events in its indoor-outdoor spaces as well as organize private tours and workshops for groups.
Because of Fayetteville’s local college football team, meeting planners looking to host events during the season should keep an eye on the football calendar, as hotels completely book up on game weekends. “We don’t have any statewide professional teams, so the Razorbacks are it,” said Brunner. “The entire town kind of stops on Saturday.” Likewise, Brunner advises groups to avoid the period in September around the annual Bikes, Blues and BBQ, a gathering of 300,000 bikers centered on Fayetteville that books up hotels all the way up to Missouri and down to Fort Smith.
www.experiencefayetteville.com
Fort Smith
Before Arkansas became part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase, the area served as an interstitial zone between the Native American territories and the areas newly settled by Europeans. Once American borders moved west and new laws along with it, Fort Smith was the border between organization and lawlessness, the last stop before leaving civilization.
“Years ago, the Arkansas River marked the city limits, the end of the state and the end of the United States,” said Claude Legris, executive director of the Fort Smith Convention and Visitors Bureau. “It was really a fort, established so that troops could keep peace between the tribes; but because it was a frontier town, there were a lot of laws being broken because people could escape over the border.”
Positioned at the intersection of the New South and the Old West, Fort Smith today is a place where visitors can take in history in a pure, unadulterated form, with sites such as the barracks, the courthouse and the jail at the Fort Smith National Historic Site. Groups can take advantage of re-enactment events and reutilized spaces like the visitors center and museum housed in a former bordello now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
After their groups have taken in some history, planners can bring them back firmly to the 21st century with meeting venues like the Fort Smith Convention Center, with a 40,000-square-foot exhibit hall and a 1,200-seat permanent theater; the 17,000-square-foot Fort Smith Event Center; or the MovieLounge, a unique space that combines meeting and event rooms with catered movie theaters.
Hot Springs
Billing itself as “America’s First Resort,” Hot Springs, Arkansas, is a one-of-a-kind destination, not just in the state of Arkansas, but in the entire country. Hot Springs is home to a national park within the city limits, and many of its meeting venues are within walking distance of Hot Springs National Park.
“We’ve been welcoming travelers since before Hernando de Soto,” said Visit Hot Springs CEP Steve Arrison. “Hot Springs bodes well for meeting attendance because we’re a place people like to bring their family members, no matter what their ages. We’re a city of about 37,000, but we do close to 4 million overnight travelers a year. You have the facilities you’d expect in a larger market but in a nice community, where people can walk from the venue to dinner or the off-site.”
Hot Springs is home to the largest convention center in the state, the Hot Springs Convention Center, with 360,000 square feet of meeting space; there are also 4,000 hotel rooms situated in town and on the lake. With multiple new properties coming online each year, Hot Springs offers a wealth of options for meeting planners.
Downtown, the Arlington Hotel and Spa is the largest hotel in terms of meeting space, with an 8,250-square-foot conference center, a 5,600-square-foot ballroom, an exhibit center and eight additional boardrooms and breakout rooms. It has one of the largest and oldest hotels in the state, dating back to 1875 and now including 500 rooms and suites. The national park’s historic Bathhouse Row is right across the street, where groups can have a guided tour of the historic bathhouses before heading further into the park to soak in the views from the 216-foot-high Hot Springs Mountain Tower.
On the lake, the Clarion Hot Springs Hotel on Lake Hamilton has 149 guests rooms and 9,000 square feet of meeting space that includes a seventh-floor ballroom with sweeping views of town and the national park.
Arrison said many groups like to plan their meetings around the races at historic Oaklawn, which has hosted premier races, including the Arkansas Derby, since 1904, using meeting space on-site for part of the day and then taking in a race. But hotel space can be challenging to find in the last week or so of the racing season.
