With its wellness retreats and spa experiences at the city’s top-notch hotels as well as its myriad of outdoor oases ranging from parks to gardens, Washington, DC offers a wealth of wellness experiences. Add in the vast cultural, creative and sustainability opportunities to tie into your meeting or incentive and you have a destination that offers one-of-a-kind experiences.
“We are seeing more and more meetings these days that want hyper-local experiences,” says Melissa Riley, Sr. VP of Convention Sales and Services for Destination DC, “and here in DC we are firm believers that a good leisure destination makes a good meetings destination. Wellness has become a big focus—we put it under the sustainability umbrella because wellness is also about human sustainability such as sunrise health and activities that get people out into the fresh air before they’re in the four walls of a meeting space for the rest of the day getting their education and content.”
Riley explains that in DC, they are grateful to have outdoor venues such as Rock Creek Park, which has spectacular hiking grounds and can carry out activations for incentive, corporate and association groups. Also, she explains DC is a waterfront city, sitting on the Potomac and Anacostia rivers where groups can take on a CSR project from a sustainability standpoint or participate in kayaking and other water activities that are refreshing for the mind, body and soul.
DC is also home to many properties that cater to groups and which can easily integrate wellness into activities for attendees. For instance, Salamander Washington DC just took over a previously owned and branded 2-story spa with the idea of investing in the health and wellness space.
Beams Riley, “We offer the 4-mile running/walking maps that offer a loop from Lincoln Memorial to the US Capitol, an experience you cannot get anywhere else. Walk out of any downtown DC hotel in front of the convention center and in 15 minutes you can be on the National Mall. In fact, DC offers a great portfolio of activities we call A Day in Your Stay, and so looking at specific market segments like medical meetings, there is our farmers market for an organic healthy lunch experience. There are many local themes catered for specific groups.”
Culture is another unique aspect of DC, making it ideal for meetings. “Most of the 17 institutes from Smithsonian are available for private events,” says Riley, “or groups can meet in the Library of Congress, even the National Archives where the documents that secure our nation’s history are located. These are incredible opportunities you cannot get anywhere else in the world.”
“There’s so much more to the city than people realize,” explains Riley. “For instance, we have 21 institutes of higher education in the Washington, DC region and there is a hotbed of research, intellect of professors and master students that are looking at how to innovate, create and design the future of global issues.” This talent, she notes, is available to integrate into meetings.
On the sustainability front, Riley explains that sustainability means different things to different people. “Most people think sustainability means green, but I think now sustainability Is an umbrella term for anything we need to do to better our society and our industries as a whole,” she concludes.
To that point, one of the things the city has done is put in place a full-time dedicated person focused on sustainability, who can work with the community and meeting organizations to be that liaison to create events. Notes Riley, “We want to understand the values of the organization meeting in our city and how best we can match it to the underserved needs in our community.”
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