Georgia World Congress Center Authority

An AJC article about our meeting space.

  

Atlanta Journal-Constitution - October 14, 2011

World Congress Center courts smaller crowds.
Officials offer space to more modest meetings.
Shift comes amid dwindling number of major conventions.

   By Leon Stafford staff

When Kathy Hunt seeks space for a meeting of Delta Air Line pilots, she usually puts local hotels or the Georgia International Convention Center on standby.

But recently she’s begun to think bigger — much bigger.

Hunt is among a group of planners of small meetings that Georgia World Congress Center officials recently began reaching out to in an effort to convince them to consider the nation’s fourth-largest convention center for their next gathering.

“They have a small board room with 34 seats that would be perfect for some of our meetings,” said Hunt, a meeting planner for the Delta chapter of the Air Lines Pilots Association. “I never considered the Georgia World Congress Center because I didn’t think we were big enough. I definitely have a different outlook now.”

The GWCC’s move comes at a time when the number of giant trade shows and conventions that are its bread and butter — meetings that bring 20,000 to 100,000 people to Atlanta — is dwindling. At the same time, the industry is adding hundreds of thousands of square feet of space to an already bloated supply.

That puts the facility in direct competition with smaller venues like the Cobb Galleria Center or the Gwinnett Center, which cater to small groups that don’t usually think of the GWCC.

But diversifying its customer base is critical for the GWCC because it has struggled to make ends meet the past few fiscal years as conventioneers have spent less on food and beverages and parking. The number of convention attendees also has fallen because of the economy.

Heywood Sanders, a University of Texas at San Antonio professor who studies the industry and is a frequent critic, has said that the oversupply of space has forced the larger centers to hunt for business that they would not have in the past. That’s good for groups looking for bargains, but bad for facilities because those that lose will have little recourse to make up the lost business.

The smaller, short-term meetings like receptions, banquets, dinners, cotillions and weddings offer the GWCC the income it needs as the competition becomes more aggressive. About 5 percent to 8 percent of the facility’s business is short-term or small meetings.

“You’re always looking for ways to increase your bottom line,” said Mark Geiger, a spokesman for the center. The challenge, Geiger said, is to change the perception that the GWCC is too big for small meetings. With more than a 120 rooms, auditoriums and plenty of breakout spaces, the GWCC can accommodate just about any gathering, he said. “The GWCC can be intimidating because of its sheer size,” Geiger said. “But we have the best flexibility. There’s nothing we can’t handle.”

Shean Atkins, director of community partnerships at the Atlanta Housing Authority, said the GWCC is his place of choice for meetings, whether it’s a utility forum or job and resource fairs, because of the diversity of space. “They have rooms that can be blocked off to give you a very intimate event without the feeling of being swallowed up by all of the space,” he said. “But they also have large auditoriums if you need that.”  Also making it attractive, Atkins said, is its access to MARTA, which has a stop just steps from its doors.  “Transportation is a huge issue for us,” he said. “A lot of our participants are transportation dependent.”

Copyright 2011 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution