Road to Success
By: Maria Lenhart
With regional meetings on the upswing, gas prices dropping and air service to smaller airports on the decline, a variety of forces are aligning to encourage the drive-to meeting.
Grand Geneva Resort, Lake Geneva, Wis.
In the upper Midwest, the Grand Geneva Resort in Lake Geneva, Wis., is a popular getaway for meeting groups seeking a laid-back lakeside environment within easy driving distance of several metro regions.
“We do a great mix of association and corporate business for drive-in meetings because we’re so centrally located from Chicago and Milwaukee, ” says Lauren Vernick, director of group sales for Grand Geneva Resort. “We’re just a 45-minute drive from the Chicago suburbs where a lot of corporate business is headquartered.”
Not surprisingly, the resort promotes its locale heavily to regional associations, where attendees may be driving from as far afield as Minnesota, Iowa and Indiana.
“From a lot of these places, it’s no more than a three- or four-hour ride to get here,” Vernick says. “It’s more relaxing than flying – and there’s not a lot of traffic heading into Lake Geneva.”
The resort also emphasizes its relative affordability for a drive-to.
“Unlike a downtown destination, we offer complimentary self-parking and have lots of it,” she says. “Even if we have multiple groups coming in at the same time, we can get creative with overflow parking, even using our airstrip.”
Set on 1,300 acres, the 355-room resort offers a full four-seasons roster of activities and amenities, including golf, a water park, horseback riding, volleyball, tennis, cross-country skiing and sledding.
