Business View Magazine June 2023

68 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 6 Located in the heart of this esteemed city is the Tampa Convention Center, a prominent 600,000-square-foot venue offering a state- of-the-art experience. Owned by the city of Tampa, the facility serves as a hub for various conventions, conferences, trade shows, and other events. The convention center boasts a prime waterfront location along the Hillsborough River, offering scenic views and convenient access to nearby hotels, restaurants, and attractions. With exhibit halls, meeting rooms, ballrooms, and outdoor event spaces, the facility has ample space for large-scale exhibitions and trade shows, elegant settings for banquets, galas, and corporate events, and more intimate areas for smaller gatherings and breakout sessions. The convention center’s prime location in downtown Tampa provides easy access to nearby hotels, restaurants, entertainment venues, and the Tampa Riverwalk, a scenic pedestrian trail along the waterfront. This makes it ideal for attendees to immerse themselves in the Tampa experience during their visit. David Ingram, Tampa Convention Center Executive Director, describes how the center partners with Visit Tampa Bay to promote and organize events for the facility and continue to bring economic impact to the city. He says, “Our good friends over at Visit Tampa Bay handle the sales portion for us 18 months out. Anything 18 months and in, we take care of ourselves.” Events cover a wide range, including everything from a local prom to large-scale concerts, and everything in between. “The fact that we do so many different types of events has a major economic impact on the community. It allows us to have our hotel rooms filled, our restaurants filled, and not just from the convention side, but also from the destination and leisure side,” Ingram relays. “We offer so much as a destination that it’s second to none in the country. This is