MeetingsNet

Nov 25, 2024 | meetingsnet.com | Sue Hatch

There’s good news and bad news for the San Francisco convention scene. On a positive note, the San Francisco Travel Association is reporting a significant uptick in convention bookings, with 30 events confirmed at Moscone Center in 2025, including HubSpot’s Inbound 2025, Dreamforce, and, for the first time, Microsoft’s Ignite conference.

Nov 22, 2024 | meetingsnet.com | Sue Hatch

As vice president and deputy general counsel at event management giant Maritz for the past seven years, Jill Blood has had a front-row seat on industry contracting trends. And one trend that has caught her attention is what she calls, “sustainability with teeth.”Historically, she says, sustainability efforts have been focused on on-site activations, such as cutting down on swag or providing reusable water bottles.

Nov 22, 2024 | meetingsnet.com | Sue Hatch

Among the more than 80 hotels in the Fairmont Hotels & Resorts portfolio, many are true landmark properties—think, for example, of the Fairmont San Francisco at the top of Nob Hill, The Plaza in New York City, or the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies. With the mid-November opening of the Fairmont Breakers Long Beach, the Accor luxury brand aims to add another classic to its collection.

Nov 22, 2024 | meetingsnet.com | Rob Carey

As more than 50,000 people arrived in mid-November to Baku, Azerbaijan, for the United Nations climate conference known as COP29, the irony of the situation was too prominent to ignore. First, the United Nations received much criticism for holding its annual carbon-reduction-strategy event in a nation that’s a major extractor and exporter of fossil fuels—and is preparing to increase its natural-gas extraction by 35 percent over the next 10 years.

Nov 20, 2024 | meetingsnet.com | Chris Bryant

With so much technology at meeting planners’ fingertips every day, it can be challenging to decide which tools will help them work more quickly and effectively. Especially in the life-science events niche, technology is key to smoothing the planner’s workflow, improving the experience for HCP attendees, and boosting the return on investment for the event host. So says Kristen Hunter, HMCC, CED, a life-science event director for more than 20 years and principal at KH Conferences.