The capital of the Austrian region of Tyrol, Innsbruck is an impressive sight, nestled as it is in the Inn Valley in Eastern Austria, with huge, snow-topped mountains to either side. (Visitors usually make a beeline for its most famous site, the Golden Roof, which was built for Maximilian I in 1500.) Ski resorts are in relative abundance, and with tourism the main industry of Innsbruck, meeting venues are plentiful.
Innsbruck Kranebitten Airport (INN) is less than three miles to the southwest of the city center. No direct flights serve North America, but many come from major European cities, including London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Vienna, with many more flights during the winter months.
There are not one but two convention venues in Innsbruck: Congress Innsbruck, which has 200,000 square feet of exhibition space, including an orangery and 15 halls with a maximum of 2,000 persons being able to be hosted; and Innsbruck Messe, also known as the Innsbruck Convention Center, which will finish a massive renovation and expansion by the end of 2011, by which time it will have seven exhibition halls and six conference rooms, covering more than 400,000 square feet of function space.
Hotel venues in Innsbruck include the 196-room Event & Conference Hotel Grauer Bar, which has six conference rooms for up to 300 persons; the 176-room Hilton Innsbruck, which has six function spaces, including a ballroom for up to 400 persons; 115-room Grand Hotel Europa, which has its impressive Baroque Hall; and the modern, 106-room Austria Trend Congress Hotel Innsbruck, which is close to the convention center and has six meeting rooms, with the largest hosting up to 210 persons.
Event space here makes use of old, wooden, atmospheric Tyrolean architecture and the surrounding beauty of this part of the Alps. The funicular to the Bergisel Café im Turm takes groups up 750 feet to a café that can host up to 110 persons in a new restaurant opened only in 2011 and another 50 on a jump; the views are, needless to say, fantastic from this former Olympic Games ski-jump platform. Event venues in Innsbruck (or anywhere, for that matter) can hardly get more regal than the Imperial Palace, which, among other spaces, has the Gothic Cellar for 300 persons and the Reisensaal (Giant's Hall) for 400, as well as a huge courtyard.
Among the many restaurants serving Austrian, German and international fare is Café Sacher Innsbruck, which nestles in the Imperial Palace and reopened after a top-to-bottom renovation in early 2011. Two choices in very old, grand buildings are Ottoburg, which is in what is considered to be Innsbruck's oldest "castle" and can host between 12 and 39 persons in six private rooms; and Weinhaus Happ, which dates to 1484 (that is, it's thought to be younger than the building in which resides Ottoburg) and has five function rooms hosting between eight and 50 persons.
