Galveston Island: historic charm and ambiance.

Island ambiance, a temperate climate, historic charm, and first-class hotels and meeting facilities make Galveston Island a natural choice for association meeting planners looking for a special site. Galveston is easily accessible as well, with Houston's Hobby Airport only 30 minutes away. Once there, Galveston offers big-city amenities with small-town convenience, because nothing on the island is more than 15 minutes away.

The heart of the 32-mile-long barrier island's meetings package is the Galveston Island Convention Center at Moody Gardens, a 60,000-square-foot facility with 37,500 square feet of exhibit space and 11 fully equipped meeting rooms with movable acoustic walls in 9,100 square feet of space. The center is adjacent to the Moody Gardens Hotel, which opened earlier this year with 303 guest rooms and meeting space.

In fact, Galveston offers more than 130,000 combined square feet of meeting space at its various hotels, which offer more than 4,000 guest rooms when combined with available area condominiums. Two properties offer conference centers - the 243-room San Luis Resort and Conference Center and the 230-room Victorian Condo-Hotel and Conference Center, which recently opened a 4,100-square-foot ballroom.

Other meetings-oriented hotels on the island include the Galveston Island Hilton Resort, Flagship Hotel Over the Water, Harbor House, Holiday Inn on the Beach, Tremont House, and Hotel Galvez, an historic beachfront hotel recently restored to its original 1911 grandeur.

The Tremont House is a 117-room Victorian-inspired luxury hotel nestled in the heart of Galveston's Strand National Historic District, where more than 100 shops, restaurants, galleries, and other attractions are located within 36 square blocks of historic buildings. Occupied since the 1500s, all of Galveston Island is an historic treasure with more than 550 designated landmarks on the National Register of Historic Places and more than 1,500 historic homes.

Moody Gardens: New Hotel, Aquarium Add to Paradise

Imagine being surrounded by a tropical paradise, lush gardens, and majestic pyramids. Now, imagine waking up in the luxurious accommodations of a new hotel and walking through that paradise to your next meeting. This meeting planner's dream is a reality at Moody Gardens, where paradise is only 45 minutes south of Houston via I-45.

The dream was made possible when the new Moody Gardens Hotel opened in January in the midst of the 242-acre Moody Gardens recreational-education complex on Galveston Island. The 303-room hotel, just steps from the Galveston Island Convention Center at Moody Gardens, offers more than 20,000 square feet of meeting space of its own. The hotel's 15,000-square-foot Frances Anne Moody Ballroom is designed to be flexible yet upscale event space, while its business center, smaller meeting rooms, full-service spa and salon, exercise facilities, casual and formal dining, and exotic outdoor pool round out a truly first-class experience.

The new hotel is directly connected via a covered walkway to the Galveston Island Convention Center at Moody Gardens, which offers groups 9,500 square feet of meeting room space and 37,500 square feet of exhibit space. Close and available for social events is the visitor center, with its glass walls and soaring ceilings for spectacular views of the complex.

The Moody Gardens complex provides one of the most exotic and unique meetings destinations in Texas. Guests can enjoy the white sand beaches and blue lagoons of Palm Beach, cruise Offats Bayou aboard the Colonel Paddlewheel Boat, or stroll through acres of lush gardens. Moody Gardens also is home to America's first 3D IMAX Theater and thrilling IMAX Ridefilm theater. Plus, the Rainforest Pyramid has more than 1,700 species of exotic plants, animals, and butterflies, and the Discovery Museum's Mars Habitat exhibit built by NASA complements 60 other interactive space exhibits.

This June, yet another spectacular attraction will come on line. The Aquarium at Moody Gardens will be one of the world's largest aquariums at 1.5 million gallons. Encompassing a 130,000-square-foot pyramid will be exhibits of marine life from the cool waters of the north Pacific, the tropical Pacific's Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea, the frigid environment of the edge of the Antarctic, and the warm waters of the tropical Caribbean.