Event Planning – Spotlight on Atlanta


Ray Charles once crooned that the road leads back to Georgia and it’s always on our minds. But there’s a lot more to Atlanta than steel magnolias, civil war history and Georgia peaches. In addition to being home to three professional sports franchises, with over 35 million visitors each year, Atlanta is the seventh most visited city in the USA.

Atlanta is a Mecca for Fortune 500 companies and ranks sixth in the country with a gross domestic product of over $270 billion. Although Coca-Cola is the king of Atlanta, it’s also home to headquarters for BellSouth, Delta Airlines, Home Depot, UPS, and Georgia-Pacific. And while business, finance and manufacturing are all big business, tourism is the second leading industry in the state.

So with a combination of history, diverse neighborhoods, and entertainment coupled with a subtropical climate (hot summers and mild winters) you should be asking yourself, “Why haven’t I considered Atlanta lately?”

Event Planning Atlanta – The City in a Forest

Atlanta is known as the “city in a forest”, due to the large profusion of trees. A profusion of trees cuts a swath through the city, spreading into the ‘burbs and encompasses the largest tree coverage of all large American cities at 36% (the national average is 27%).

The natural beauty of the flowering dogwoods, southern pines and magnolias are one of the reasons Atlanta made National Geographic’s list of “50 Places of a Lifetime”, calling it “surprisingly lush”.

Adding to the “City in a Forest” is the Canopy Walk. Located in The Atlanta Botanical Gardens, it’s a 600 foot elevated walkway (40 feet above ground) that ambles through 15 acres of mature hardwoods and is considered the only elevated walkway of its kind.

Event Planning Atlanta – A City of Neighborhoods

The capitol of Georgia has a population of over 420,000 people and the Atlanta metropolitan area (metro Atlanta) has a population of over 520,000. But it truly is a city of neighborhoods with over 240 neighborhoods giving it a feel of a series of smaller communities, rather than one large city. Regardless of what you’re looking for, nightlife, history, traditional or urbane, Atlanta has it all!

Event Planning Atlanta – Venues, Venues, Venues!

The venues are as varied as the neighborhoods. Your choices range from historical to natural to urban and sophisticated. Whatever style and feel you want, you’ll find in Atlanta.

The Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC) is the largest convention center in Atlanta and the fourth largest in the US with over 3.9 million square of exhibit space. Located in downtown Atlanta, near Centennial Olympic Park, the Georgia Dome and the CNN Center, the GWCC hosts more than one million visitors a year.

The CNN Center is the world headquarters of the Cable News Network (CNN) and is home to the main newsrooms and studios for several of CNN’s news channels. Located in downtown Atlanta, the CNN Center has versatile and functional spaces appropriate for groups ranging up to 400 attendees.

The Georgia Aquarium is the largest indoor aquarium in the world. Home to over 500 different species (and 120,000 animals), the aquarium is a popular destination for weddings, meetings and special events. With events catered by Wolfgang Puck, the Aquarium is a popular destination for weddings, meetings and special events.

Atlanta combines the best of the south with the multiculturalism of a world class city and should be on the radar of every meeting and event planner!

Recent Posts