Now solidly in meeting planners’ regular destination rotations, Downtown Los Angeles is not slowing down at all. Currently under way: development of the 350-room Hotel Indigo Downtown Los Angeles, part of the $1 billion Metropolis development (rendering above), expected to open at the end of 2016; the 496-room Sheraton Los Angeles Downtown getting a $45 million upgrade as part of The Bloc, the $160 million transformation of a building formerly known as Macy’s Plaza, which will feature street-accessible stores and restaurants and internal access to a Metro Rail station; the 250-room W Los Angeles Downtown, slated to open early in 2019 across the street from L.A. LIVE and the STAPLES Center, with a spa and 15,000 square feet of meeting space; and the addition of 755 rooms to the JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. LIVE, which will become California’s second-largest hotel when the new rooms open in 2018 (at that point offering a total of 1,756 rooms), attached to The Ritz-Carlton, Los Angeles.

In all, Downtown Los Angeles, the heart of the city’s financial district, offers 11,000 rooms, 7,400 of them within 1.5 miles of the convention center.

“We are spending $100 million putting Sheraton front and center as our business and meetings brand,” says Alison Taylor, senior vice president, Starwood Sales Organization. Sheraton is Starwood’s largest brand, and includes some of the largest meeting hotels in the company’s portfolio. (The Sheraton Macao, for example, offers 4,001 rooms—and will have the 400-room St. Regis Macao joining it in the Sands Cotai Central complex by the end of the year.)

Also part of the Sheraton 2020 plan is the designation of “Sheraton Grand” properties. Ten have been designated so far, with 50 to be named by the end of 2015 and 100 by early 2017. Among the features that gain properties entry into this select brand-within-a-brand: They are resorts, convention properties, and urban hotels that outperform guest satisfaction benchmarks; their guest rooms and public spaces exhibit sophisticated design and elevated finishes; they are in sought-after locations; and they offer inspiring and state-of-the-art meeting space. A few of those currently on the list: The Sheraton Grand Beijing Dongcheng Hotel, Sheraton Grand Dubai (pictured), and Sheraton Grand Hotel & Spa Edinburgh.

(By the way, if you haven’t heard about the double-double promotion: Planners can earn double points on SPGPro rewards program for bookings made by year’s end and operating by December 31, 2016.)

Planners visiting a hotel’s Web site are certainly looking for facts, figures, and photos. They don’t necessarily expect to find galleries of creative desserts for events, or tips for teambuilding, or ideas for an LED wall in the ballroom. But that’s a taste of the content at Marriott’s MeetingsImagined Web site. Styled around a grid of photos, like Pinterest, the site is searchable by brand, type of meeting, and categories such as tech, meeting setup, and F&B. Mike Wainwright, vice president, sales straetgy, for the Marriott Convention & Resort Network, says the company’s aim is “to engage planners and customers and drive innovation and creativity. It’s an inspirational place to browse,” and includes contributions from individual Marriott hotels and resorts that specialize in meetings as well as from outside sources.

See what you can imagine here.

Chris FJ Lynn (pictured, right, with MeetingsNet Content Director Betsy Bair), London & Partners’ vice president for North America, was the perfect host for The eVent at Tryst Nightclub at The Wynn, co-sponsored by VisitScotland and London & Partners, on Tuesday night at IMEX. He was up bright and early the next morning for the first-ever IMEXrun event, sponsored by Rio, and then off to a breakfast co-hosted by London & Partners and ExCeL London. At breakfast, Tracy Halliwell, MBE, director of business tourism and major events at L&P, and David Pegler, CEO, ExCel London, announced a record year for association meetings in London, with record attendance at both the European Society of Cardiology Congress and at IEEE, the International Conference on Communications. Next year promises to be an eventful one as well, with the Queen’s 90th birthday celebration, the third London Tech Week in June, and the debut of the Harry Potter play, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”

AVANI Hotels & Resorts is a new upscale hotel concept being launched by Minor Hotel Group Ltd., with locations across Asia, Australia, the Middle East, and Africa. The first AVANI (which stems from the Sanskrit word for earth) will be the AVANI Riverside Bangkok Hotel, overlooking Bangkok’s bustling Chao Phraya River. Opening next year, the 26-floor hotel tower will house global retail brands and a host of dining, bars, spa, and entertainment options. It will offer 251 guest rooms and suites and 48,000 square feet of multipurpose space, featuring one of the largest ballrooms on the river. At the neighboring 408-room Anantara Riverside Bangkok Resort (pictured above), also part of the Minor Hotel Group, situated on 11 riverfront acres, a major guest room refurbishment is complete. It can accommodate meetings for up to 800 people, and offers 11 dining options and innovate amenities such as the Handy, a handheld device offering such features as free international calls to select countries, free Internet mobile access, and information on exploring Bangkok.

The 1,066-room Hilton Anatole hotel in Dallas is building a three-acre, $15 million water attraction set to debut in the spring of 2016 (rendering above). The project, which will be located inside the hotel’s sculpture park, will include heated pools and recreation areas, a new outdoor bar and restaurant, and a 23-seat swim-up bar. The area will be restricted to hotel guests, and will be available for group functions in the off-season (Labor Day to Memorial Day), or for in-season buyouts. The hotel also offers 600,000 square feet of meeting space, including 11 ballrooms, 79 meeting rooms, and an executive lounge on the 25th floor that offers panoramic views of the city.

The New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge, a 665-room hotel with views of downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan, is slated to complete its $43 million renovation by July 2016. Public spaces (pictured) have already been revitalized, and each of the hotel’s guest room towers is being renovated separately so that the hotel can remain in continuous use during the project. The hotel offers more than 40,000 square feet of meeting and banquet space, the largest of which is a 18,105-square-foot Grand Ballroom that accommodates 1,800 attendees.

Belle Mont Farm on Kittitian Hill, a high-end boutique property nestled into the side of a volcano on St. Kitts in the middle of a 400-acre working farm, offers 84 one-bedroom guest houses and two four-bedroom villas, all surrounded by banana trees and mangos and featuring their own infinity pools. Created to provide an immersive culinary experience in a fully sustainable environment, the farm provides a unique luxury venue for corporate retreats and advisory board meetings of up to 60 people. The property’s five restaurants feature all locally sourced food, mostly from the farm’s own crops—its only imports are olive oil and wine. The property also offers a spa featuring treatments using local herbs and vegetables, and activities ranging from culinary classes to yoga to hikes up the volcano. While it does have a private beach club within a 15-minute drive and all the guest houses have ocean views, the property is not for those looking for a typical beachy Caribbean getaway. The vision behind it, according to founder Val Kempadoo, is “to offer an unforgettable experience, while bringing lasting, life-changing benefits to the local people and economy.” (Pictured: The guest house verandas feature bathtubs.)

With soaring, 29-foot ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows, the main foyer of IPEC Las Vegas creates a grand backdrop for receptions, while its 10,000-square-foot ballroom accommodates events for up to 720 guests.

IPEC Las Vegas is a new, free-standing meeting and event venue with on-site overnight accommodation for up to 200 guests. Just minutes from the Strip, IPEC Las Vegas hosts training seminars, association meetings, corporate conferences—any event requiring an “immersive, focused atmosphere.” In addition to the ballroom, the venue offers a 1,300-square-foot multipurpose room and five other conference rooms. Parking for 200 vehicles, a 2,500-square-foot kitchen, and full audiovisual services and production facilities also are available.

Learn more here.

Talk to Richard Knight, director of marketing, The Americas, for VisitScotland, for a minute or two and you want to book the next flight to Edinburgh. (And there are more now, by the way! American has a new nonstop from JFK, May through September.)

“Scotland delivers at the highest level,” he says. “For the MICE market we’re 30 percent cheaper than our competitors but we’ve got the history and innovation, the beauty and resorts, we’re the home of golf and whisky. We’re punching above our weight.” Meanwhile, VisitScotland is a free resource—14 people who will work as an extension of your team, linking you to local experts and other resources.

Venue news in the country includes the Lennox Suite at the Edinburgh Conference Centre, which accommodates 2,000 guests in an arena or theater setup, or 750 guests in a tiered banquet setup (pictured). In hotel news, the 269-room Sheraton Edinburgh has become Sheraton Grand Hotel & Spa Edinburgh, earning the label by being judged one of the world’s top 10 Sheratons; Gleneagles Hotel has opened a 26,000-square-foot arena in Perthshire; and Trump Turnberry is spending $300 million renovating the 1906 hotel, which has 149 rooms and will reopen in June 2016.

Also notable, Edinburgh moved up nine spots to number 31 on the latest International Congress & Convention Association world rankings of the most popular cities for international association meetings.

At the northern end of the Quintana Roo hotel zone in Cancun is the crown jewel of the Palace Resorts portfolio, the 260-room Le Blanc Spa Resort. An adults-only property with two ballrooms divisible into nine breakout rooms and able to accommodate 440 guests for a banquet, Le Blanc also offers a spa with 19 treatment rooms, three outdoor pools, and several dining outlets and bars. The brand was launched in 2005 and its second resort is under development in Los Cabos, expected to open by the end of 2016 with 350 rooms.

The all-inclusive billing simplifies budgeting for planners—and simplifies free time for attendees as well, notes Alan Doyle, vice president of global sales, meetings and incentives, Palace Resorts. For example, at the company’s flagship 2,400-room Moon Palace in Cancun, which has 15 on-site restaurants, planners can plan a dinearound and reserve blocks of seats at each of the outlets—that’s the only situation in which reservations are accepted, in fact—with no cash registers in sight. Moon Palace also has 300,000 square feet of meeting space.

The landmark Claremont Hotel in Oakland and Berkeley, Calif., (it’s on the line) was bought last year by a group of investors that includes FRHI Hotels & Resorts. At the end of this year, after an extensive upgrade, the hillside property will take on the Fairmont brand name and begin a celebration of its centennial. The renovation encompasses the 276 guest rooms, the entrance and lobby, and several restaurants. The project will add a lobby lounge with views of San Francisco Bay, a presidential suite, and a French brasserie. The property offers 30,000 square feet of meeting space, three pools, 10 tennis courts, and a spa. 

Small, luxe groups will have two new options in Paris next year when two grande dames reopen their doors: the 117-year-old Ritz Paris and the landmark Hôtel de Crillon. The 159-room Ritz Paris closed in 2012 and, after investing more than $200 million in a top-to-bottom upgrade, plans to reopen in the spring with renovated rooms, gardens, and restaurants worthy of its glamorous history. The hotel has hosted a long line of notables—Ingrid Bergman, Coco Chanel, Ernest Hemingway, and Cole Porter, to name a few—and its Imperial Suite has been registered as a national monument by the French government. The 147-room Hôtel de Crillon also hopes to turn heads with its first major renovation since the 18th century building became a hotel in 1909. The property, now part of Rosewood Hotels and Resorts, closed its doors in March 2013 and when it reopens in late 2016 will have two suites designed by Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld, a lavish spa, and an indoor swimming pool.

Hyatt Hotels Corp. has rolled out the meeting planner focus of its new Hyatt Regency marketing campaign, “It’s Good Not to Be Home,” as well as a plan to engage meeting attendees and business travelers with the brand. The tagline for the meeting planner audience–“Let’s make it good not to be home”—showcases how Hyatt Regency hotels and resorts work with planners to provide an outstanding experience for attendees, said Samie Barr, the new Hyatt Regency brand vice president (who previously worked at Starbucks). As part of that engagement initiative, Hyatt has formed strategic partnerships with Fast Company and Comedy Central in the U.S., added Gus Vonderheide, Hyatt's VP of global sales. Fast Company will help create opportunities for entrepreneurial-minded travelers to connect, hosting experiential sessions at select hotels, including a series of workshops and networking events designed to allow guests to make new connections. It is also working with Comedy Central to tap into the power of humor to bring people together by celebrating funny “not at home” moments. Guests will also be treated to some surprising and comedic moments at select hotels across the U.S.

In a recent global survey of business professionals, Hilton Worldwide found that more than two-thirds of them, ranging from Millennials to those over the age of 65, overwhelmingly prefer meeting in-person over any other collaboration method. Hilton’s Chef Marc, vice president, corporate chef, Americas; and Chef Gordon, Arizona Biltmore executive chef, drove the concept home at the “Mindful Eating Bar” in Hilton’s booth at IMEX. To encourage connections and ignite powerful ideas over coffee, Hilton has launched a global coffee promotion, providing complimentary coffee or tea for the first meeting break at participating Hilton properties for meetings booked now through November 15, which take place before March 31, 2016. For more information on the offer, visit ideasbythecup.com. Read more about the study.