Trade show venues: education and economy.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: Conventions & Meetings

An important aspect of business is education; it's in the best interest of business owners and operators to keep informed on industry technology, service providers, new competitors, and other developments. Business conventions, conferences, and trade shows provide ample opportunities for education and networking.

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While conventions and trade shows are beneficial for the organizer, the vendors, and the attendees, they're also a significant investment on the part of all of those parties. Everyone invests their time--additionally, vendors purchase booth space, the organizer pays for venue space, and attendees often pay registration fees.

It's important for all parties for the trade show to be successful, and a large contributor to any event's success is the venue in which it's held.

In Anchorage

"Anchorage has got a lot of venues for meetings," says Visit Anchorage Director of Convention Sales Julie Dodds. "The five major convention hotels--Alyeska Resort, Hotel Captain Cook, Sheraton Anchorage Hotel & Spa, Hilton Anchorage, and the Anchorage Marriott Downtown--all have meeting space in them, and depending on the size of the meeting and what their needs are, [a trade show] could fit in a hotel." Additionally Anchorage has two convention centers, the Egan Center and the Dena'ina Civic and Convention Center, which Dodds says is unusual for most cities Anchorage's size.

She continues, "The Egan Center, back in the early 2000s, we realized was at capacity. ... A lot of state groups were being pushed to different times, a lot of civic events weren't able to go on, and it doesn't have a trade show hall, so there were a lot of conventions that we didn't go after because there was no trade show space."

Thus in 2005 a ballot initiative was passed to build the Dena'ina Center, which opened its doors in 2008 with 50,000 square feet of trade show halls, a large banquet hall (with capacity for 390 booths), and breakout space--in total, the new center offers nearly 200,000 square feet of event space. Which venue is "right" depends entirely on the event. "Sometimes meetings fit better in the Egan Center," Dodds says. "Downstairs in the Summit Hall is probably the most flexible meeting space in the whole city; it can be reconfigured in a lot of different ways." Summit Hall is comprised of up to fourteen contiguous rooms and Explorers Hall can fit banquet seating for up to 1,400; all told the Egan Center boasts more than 85,000 square feet of space.

As far as the Anchorage area's convention hotels, the Sheraton Anchorage has thirteen meeting rooms and 25,000 total square feet of meeting space; The Anchorage Marriott Downtown has 22,851 total square feet of event space, twelve rooms in total; The Hotel Captain Cook has fourteen meeting and conference rooms, ranging from a 288-square-foot library to a large, 9,000-square-foot ballroom; the Alyeska Resort has more...