Gaylord Reveals Specifics on New Venue
Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 9/5/2005
During ASAE & the Center's Annual Meeting & Exposition in Nashville last month, Gaylord Hotels, the hospitality division of Gaylord Entertainment, unveiled specific plans for its newest location.
The Gaylord Natl. Resort & Convention Center in Prince George's County, Md., is slated to include 1,500 rooms, 400,000 square feet of meeting and exhibit space, and 80,000 sq. ft. of outdoor event space when it opens in early 2008.
As imagined by Avery Brooks & Associates' Todd Avery Lenahan, a Las Vegas-based interior designer who recently worked on the Wynn Las Vegas, the new Gaylord property will be as high-end as it is user-friendly.
The meeting and exhibit space "defies the convention of the big box," Lenahan said at a press conference. "We have pushed the convention center to the front of the property. Vistas and windows in the ballroom and exhibit space overlook the Potomac River."
In designing the Maryland facility, Lenahan and the rest of the architectural team relied on information culled from surveys of meeting planners who have used Gaylord's existing properties in Nashville; Kissimmee, Fla.; and Grapevine, Texas. The 180,000 sq. ft. exhibit hall has seven loading bays and an elephant door (that a semitrailer can drive through) in the back of the house.
"We already have a quarter-million advance bookings" in room nights, all meeting-related, said Gaylord Entertainment Chairman and CEO Colin Reed, who reiterated the company's strategy of landing groups that would rotate among Gaylord properties for all their meetings.
