NEWS

In 2016, Visit Savannah booked a record number of meeting- and convention-related room nights for upcoming years, and topped the number of room nights booked in 2015 by nearly 20,000 room nights.
Although leisure travel makes up the bulk of Savannah and Chatham County’s weekend tourism activity, larger meeting and convention groups do the work of filling rooms Sunday through Wednesday and book during off-peak months. This business helps to keep residents working year-round rather than seasonally, as was the industry standard in the past.

Visit Savannah also found great success in 2016 helping smaller groups needing rooms at only one hotel property to choose Savannah for their events; the number of single-hotel groups booked by the Visit Savannah team more than doubled year-over-year. The greatest value in these smaller meetings is in that they impact a broader range of hotel properties and allow booking outside of the historic district.

According to Senior Vice President of Sales and Services Jeff Hewitt, some of the business booked in 2016 extends as far in the future as 2025.