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ATLANTIC CITY
Atlantic City
Shifting focus from gaming to groups, this iconic shore city is reinventing itself
It’s official: After a few tough years, Atlantic
City is on an upswing. A December 2015
report from Meet AC projects that 2015’s
future hotel-room night bookings increased
by 34 percent compared to 2014, and that
hotel-room night bookings have doubled in
two years. The report also revealed that in
2015, future convention delegate spending
increased by 31 percent compared with 2014,
and projected delegate spending is up by 70
percent over the past two years.
It’s all welcome news, considering the city
has seen its fair share of recent challenges. In
October 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall
south of Atlantic City, leaving the destination
with minor damage but causing its casinos
and hotels to close for about a week. A little
more than a year later, four casinos closed
— Showboat Casino Hotel, Trump Plaza Hotel
and Casino, Revel, and Atlantic Club Casino
Hotel. Currently, eight remain, offering a total
of 15,630 hotel rooms.
Gaming has traditionally served as the
main pillar of Atlantic City’s economy, but
now “the meetings market is giving Atlantic
City a new foothold,” said Jim Wood, presi-
dent and CEO of Meet AC. “We’re seeing
renovations, expansions, and new openings,
and this is helping to redefine the city as it
evolves from a destination heavily centered
on gaming to a more multifaceted desti-
nation primed for meetings, conventions,
festivals, and special events.” This year will
bring a number of new events to Atlantic
City, including MPI’s 2016 World Education
Congress in June and TEAMS ’ 16, the world’s
leading conference and expo for the sports
event industry, in September.
Much of the destination’s new development is happening within its existing hotels
and resorts. Atlantic City’s newest outdoor
entertainment venue, Borgata Festival Park,
opened in June 2015 with a concert space
for 4,000 people. Adjacent to Borgata Hotel
Casino & Spa, Festival Park comprises a main
stage and a bar, as well as VIP cabana-style
seating and fire pits. Resorts Casino Hotel
also opened a new event space in the summer of 2015 — a $5-million conference center with 12 meeting rooms — which brings
the property’s total meeting space to more
than 64,000 square feet. Opened in September 2015, Harrah’s Atlantic City Waterfront
Conference Center is now the largest hotel-conference center complex from Baltimore
to Boston.
The Atlantic City Convention Center
has also recently completed a number of
Meet AC Formed in June 2014, Meet AC is a 501(c)( 6) organization that functions as Atlantic City’s
tourism economic development agency, concentrating on sales, marketing, and services for the
meetings and conventions market.
