South Towne Exposition Center. (Utah: Salt Lake City).

Having just hosted the ultimate meeting, Salt Lake City is primed for great numbers. Salt Lake's Olympic experience opens up the possibilities for planners, as a massive influx of hotel rooms to house sports spectators makes Salt Lake a bargain.

Salt Lake's convention business tripled when the new Salt Palace Convention Center opened in 1996, and since then demand for extra space has skyrocketed. To accommodate the boom in business, a 114,000-square-foot addition to the convention center opened in October 2000, bringing the Salt Palace's totals to 370,000 square feet of exhibit space and 53 meeting rooms, including a 45,000-square-foot ballroom.

The new South Towne Exposition Center opened in December 2000, adding an additional 243,000 square feet of exhibit space and 15,000 square feet of meeting-room space to Salt Lake's convention package. The Exposition Center is linked to the Salt Palace on a $312 million light-rail system called TRAX, with complimentary service between these two state-of-the-art facilities and nearby convention hotels.

Salt Lake's hotel-room inventory has increased 63 percent since 1994 to more than 17,500 rooms in 2002. And every major convention hotel has been recently remodeled in preparation for the Olympics, with the Hilton Salt Lake City Center (formerly the Salt Lake Doubletree) and Salt Lake City Marriott Downtown among them.