Omni Nashville Tops Cvent's 2016 List of Top U.S. Meetings Hotels

Business and leisure travel boomtown Nashville hosts the top two hotels among meetings technology firm Cvent's top 100 meetings hotels in the United States. The Omni Nashville rose to the top, and the neighboring Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center took second place. Spain's Hotel Arts Barcelona snagged the No. 1 spot for Europe in the first year Cvent has ranked the continent's meetings hotels. Weighted searches, proposals and other activities performed in the Cvent environment determine the rankings.

Hotel development has brought 3,000 new rooms to Nashville over the past five years, and 1,800 more are in the pipeline. December marked the 60th consecutive month in which the number of hotel rooms sold there grew year over year, according to hotel industry research firm STR, which is based in the Nashville area. In 2014, the market topped STR's annual performance data for U.S. cities, posting a 19 percent increase in revenue per available room and a nearly 13 percent increase in average daily rate. The city itself is in demand, as well. Nashville ranked No. 9 among Cvent's top meetings destinations, having advanced five rungs on the ladder in the past two years.

Las Vegas was the only other major metropolitan area to post two properties in Cvent's top 10 meetings hotels. In the top 100, Orlando hotels had 14 showings, Las Vegas and Chicago each had 10 and Nashville posted one more.

Across the Atlantic, Barcelona was in Cvent's spotlight. The Hotel Arts Barcelona grabbed the top spot among Europe's meetings hotels, while local compatriots Hilton Diagonal Mar Barcelona and the W Barcelona took the No. 3 and No. 8 rankings, respectively.

To generate the rankings, Cvent evaluated hotels that generated business through the Cvent Supplier Network in 2015. Ranking criteria included requests for proposals, RFPs awarded, total room nights, room nights awarded through RFPs, each hotel's market share within its metropolitan area and the hotel's unique profile visits in the Cvent Supplier Network.