Why Choose Our Destination?

The 16th largest city in the nation, Charlotte is home to 850,000 people and counting. Yet even after claiming a top spot on Forbes magazine’s list of “America’s fastest-growing cities” in 2016, it’s the Queen City’s unmeasurable amenities—a friendly and welcoming attitude, a longstanding tradition of hometown pride— that draw meeting planners to its door. A hard-working banking town that enjoys letting loose, Charlotte’s community comes together over good food and cold brews, at gallery crawls and home games. In the heart of it all is Center City, also known as Uptown. Seven miles from the airport, this walkable business district houses the 550,000-square-foot Charlotte Convention Center, where Visit Charlotte hosts hundreds of groups every year. In addition to offering complimentary Wi-Fi throughout the Convention Center, Visit Charlotte ensures planners take advantage of in-house perks like food and beverage services and preferred contractors. They can also help book multiple Charlotte venues, including the NASCAR Hall of Fame, which is connected to the Convention Center. Whether it’s a 10-person board meeting or an annual conference, a meeting at the Convention Center places attendees within easy walking distance of Uptown’s hotels, restaurants, museums and nightlife. In this compact district, there are more than 5,000 hotel rooms; another 2,000-plus rooms are slated to open in Center City by 2020. Adjacent to the facility are a Whole Foods, which opens summer 2018, and multiple stops for the city’s light rail system, connecting Uptown to nearby neighborhoods and suburbs. To answer the city’s growth and such burgeoning meeting potential, the Convention Center itself will undergo a $110 million expansion from 2019 to 2020, adding to the already expansive facility 50,000 square feet of meeting space and a pedestrian walkway to the 700-room Westin Hotel. These updates not only make Charlotte a prime meeting destination, but they also speak to the city’s undeniable energy. With a record number of airport travelers last year (46 million, but who’s counting?) and numerous callouts from USA Today, Southern Living, Food + Wine, Meetings Today, Smart Meetings and more, Charlotte has solidified itself as a city on the rise.