Va.'s Mountain Meeting Resorts Mount Upgrade Effort
<B> Va.'s Mountain Meeting Resorts Mount Upgrade Effort</B>
By Frank Rosci
High in the picturesque mountain ranges of Virginia are some of the best known and most complete year-round meeting resorts in North America--the hosts of numerous and frequent corporate meetings and conferences.
Among the most famous of these resort hotels is The Homestead, a 510-room, 233-year-old landmark in the midst of a $50 million renovation program. Important elements of the renovation are the addition of two new meeting rooms, created when four hotel guestrooms were converted; a new 14,000-sq.-ft. ballroom and 8,000 more square feet of pre-function space.
"The new ballroom space will give us a total of four ballrooms and the flexibility to host sizeable simultaneous events, as well as the freedom to move groups from one venue to another much more comfortably, without the need to hurry one out and hustle another into the same room," said Jeff Ford, the resort's director of group sales.
In addition to the new space, nearly 200 guestrooms in the East Wing and main building have been renovated. Hopes are that the extra space will give the sales department the ability to attract millions in group business lost because of size constraints during the past two years, Ford acknowledged. Those groups were closely tracked and are high on the list of targeted potential business. Most of the resort's current meeting business is from the Midatlantic and Northeast regions, with groups of up to 800 attendees being accommodated.
Located in Hot Springs, 80 miles from Roanoke International Airport, The Homestead relies on the airport, which can handle up to 3,000 passengers a day, and its onsite airport located 10 minutes from the hotel for transporting its guests, Ford said.
Another mountain meeting resort of note is Massanutten, located in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley at the southern end of Virginia's Massanutten Mountains. The recent addition of the $3.5 million, 22,000-sq.-ft. Massanutten Conference Center has propelled the 6,000-acre resort into corporate meetings, conferences and other events in a big way, said June Brinkman, marketing director for Great Eastern Resorts, the Charlottesville, Va.-based timeshare company that owns the conference center.
Sold out dates through 1999 and beyond are proof of the center's burgeoning popularity. The bulk of its business currently is local and ranges in size from 15 to 125 people, Brinkman said. Based on the center's success to date, plans are to expand the meetings market regionally and perhaps farther next year.
The conference center can be divided into three separate meeting rooms with soundproof walls or one grand ballroom. A $100,000 audiovisual system, outfitted with the latest technology, including Voicelift--a $10,000 overhead microphone setup that eliminates the need for clip-ons and other types of microphones--is featured. Numerous hookups for laptop computers and teleconferences also are available.
A basic meeting package that includes a slide projector, VCR and such other equipment as DVD players costs $75 per group per day. Air transportation is a mere 20 minutes away.
At the 11,000-acre Wintergreen, located in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, a $15 million capital improvements program has, among other things, upgraded a number of guestrooms and added several restaurants. Future improvements may include the addition of a skiing lodge with meeting space, as well as the construction of a hotel with meeting space, a spokesman said.
The Wintergreen Conference Center offers 14 rooms, as well as outdoor meeting space and 25,000 square feet of conference space. The resort is served by Charlottesville/Albemarle Airport and Lynchburg Municipal Airport.