Business View Magazine | Volume 9, Issue 3

107 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 3 With all of the challenges facing the event and hospitality world since March of 2020, the Savannah Convention Center team is feeling optimistic about the year ahead. As travel and in-person conferences make a comeback, GM Sherrie Spinks reports, “We are projecting an all- time record year. That’s July 2021 through June of 2022. Now, we projected that also in 2020 and then had one of our worst years, but right now, people are not canceling. So that’s good.” With enhanced cleaning and disinfecting efforts, the complex has recently completed a GBAC (Global Biorisk Advisory Council) recertification, still following a comprehensive plan to ensure the health and safety of staff and event attendees. COVID also had an unexpected upside for the center, bringing new events. As Spinks recounts, “We have done a lot more sports, and we brought a couple of events from California because California was shut down so long. We’ve SAVANNAH CONVENT ION CENTER had bodybuilding, which we never had in the past. We got them from California in 2020 and they repeated in 2021, they love Savannah!” Hosting a Strongman competition in 2020, was another first for the center. There has also been an overall increase in sports like cheerleading, gymnastics, and volleyball. “Volleyball has just exploded,” says Spinks. “A lot of those types of team sports have continued through COVID, which are very different than a normal convention.” With an expansion project currently underway, SCC hopes to be able to accommodate both the typical conventions, and new groups such as bodybuilding. According to Spinks, “It was a much needed project… we were turning away so much business that it was incumbent upon us to undertake the expansion. This is the fulfillment of a strategy that was adopted 27 years ago. It’s very rewarding to see the reality of it taking