A central location, spacious facilities, and famous off-hour activities make New Orleans an extremely popular choice for trade show and professional conferences. More than 21,000 hotel guest rooms are available downtown, and more than 37,000 are found in the metropolitan area. New Orleans is home to one of America's most popular meeting venues, the Morial Convention Center, located on the Mississippi River in the heart of the business district and within easy walking distance of the French Quarter, which offers 1.1 million square feet of contiguous exhibit space in 12 separate/combinable exhibit halls
The enormous Louisiana Superdome seats 77,000 people at one event, and offers 166,000 square feet of unobstructed convention floor space plus smaller meeting rooms. Situated in the northwest corner of the business district, the Super-dome is close to government offices and hotels.
Located near the river amid major hotels and only steps from the French Quarter, the Rivergate is another name for the Port of New Orleans Exhibition Center, where 580,000 square feet of space and numerous conference rooms are available. On the north side of the French Quarter, the Municipal Auditorium is the city's fourth largest convention center, with 52,000 square feet of show space.
Additional exhibit space and meeting rooms for large gatherings can be found at the Pontchartrain Center, which recently added the Belle Grove Plantation Ballroom, and at the Fairmont, Hyatt Regency, and Hilton Riverside hotels. Smaller groups of 200 to 300 people, however, often seek out New Orleans's unique atmosphere for gatherings in such unusual settings as the Storyville Jazz Hall and the New Orleans Paddlewheels Creole Queen—at the International Cruise Terminal—or in Terrell House, a guest home lavishly furnished in Victorian antiques.
Convention Information: The New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, 2020 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70130; telephone (504)566-5011 or (800)672-6124