InEvent Identifies the U.S. Meeting Destinations Gaining Momentum Ahead of 2027

ATLANTA, Georgia, August 2026 — As corporate event teams begin planning conferences, meetings, executive gatherings, and customer experiences for 2027, InEvent is highlighting a changing U.S. destination landscape in which established meeting hubs are being joined by a wider range of cities competing for corporate event business.

Among the destinations demonstrating particularly strong momentum are Nashville, New York City and Austin, supported by continued investment in meetings infrastructure, strong hospitality markets and their growing positions within the U.S. meetings landscape.

The movement comes as group travel continues to strengthen nationally. STR and CoStar reported that U.S. group hotel demand increased 2.7% between February and April 2026, with particularly strong gains coming from secondary markets that typically accommodate small and medium-sized events.

More recent hospitality performance provides additional reason for optimism heading into 2027. The U.S. hotel industry sold a record number of room nights during the first half of 2026, 11.4 million more than during the same period in 2025, while room revenue increased by more than $5.4 billion. Tourism Economics expects group travel recovery to continue as the industry moves into 2027.

For event professionals, those conditions are creating a deeper pool of destinations to consider.

"The U.S. meetings map is getting more interesting," said the InEvent team. "Major convention destinations remain incredibly important, but event teams have more credible options depending on the size, audience and purpose of the experience they're creating. The destination conversation is becoming less about choosing the biggest market and more about finding the right market for the event."

Nashville, New York and Austin Stand Out

Nashville continues to strengthen its position as a major meetings destination, combining substantial convention and hospitality infrastructure with the experiential appeal corporate planners increasingly consider when deciding where attendees should gather.

New York City is another destination showing renewed strength. Its global air connectivity, extensive hotel inventory, corporate presence, and breadth of event venues make it particularly relevant for organizations bringing together national and international audiences.

Austin also remains a city to watch as technology, business, hospitality and live experiences continue to intersect. Its growing meetings infrastructure and strong corporate ecosystem make the Texas capital particularly relevant for conferences, customer events and technology-focused gatherings.

The three cities represent different propositions, but together they demonstrate how corporate destination selection is broadening.

More U.S. Meeting Destinations to Watch

Beyond those three markets, InEvent identifies another group of established and rising destinations that deserve consideration as organizations build their 2027 event calendars:

• Phoenix, Arizona

• Denver, Colorado

• Scottsdale, Arizona

• Miami, Florida

• Houston, Texas

• San Antonio, Texas

• New Orleans, Louisiana

• Tampa Bay, Florida

• Charlotte, North Carolina

• Indianapolis, Indiana

• Fort Worth, Texas

Secondary markets are increasingly important. Earlier CoStar analysis found that smaller U.S. markets recorded more than 3% growth in group demand, while larger markets in the same analysis declined approximately 1.5%.

That does not mean America's traditional meeting capitals are losing their importance.

Orlando, Las Vegas, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, San Diego and Washington, D.C. remain among the country's most important destinations for large-scale conferences and corporate events because of their extensive hotel inventory, air connectivity, convention infrastructure and supplier ecosystems.

What is changing is the number of viable alternatives available to planners.

Destination Strategy Moves Beyond Size

For organizations planning 2027 programs, choosing a destination increasingly requires balancing accessibility, hotel inventory, venue capacity, attendee experience, transportation, costs and the objectives of the individual event.

A flagship conference for several thousand attendees may require the scale of Orlando, Las Vegas or Chicago. A regional meeting, executive summit, customer program or smaller corporate conference may create opportunities to consider Austin, Nashville, Tampa Bay, Charlotte, Scottsdale or other growing markets.

Current forecasts suggest that competition for group business will remain relevant into next year. Tourism Economics expects U.S. hotel demand to increase 1.1% in 2027, alongside continued recovery in group travel.

For event professionals, the takeaway is not that one destination is replacing another. It is that the U.S. corporate meetings landscape is widening.

As planning for 2027 accelerates, the strongest destination decisions will increasingly come down to finding the city that best fits the audience, economics and experience an organization wants to create.

About InEvent

InEvent is an enterprise event technology platform that helps organizations plan, manage, and scale in-person, hybrid, virtual, and webinar experiences worldwide. InEvent supports event registration, attendee management, onsite operations, engagement, networking, analytics, integrations and AI-powered event management for modern enterprise event programs.

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