ATLANTIC CITY, NJ—Caesars Entertainment Corporation officially opened its Waterfront Conference Center at Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City. The $125.8-million center’s grand opening was celebrated with a ribbon cutting, fireworks and customer event on Sept. 17. The 42,000-room Harrah’s Waterfront Conference Center has already booked meetings and conventions through 2019.
Due to the addition of the conference center, there has been an increase of 90,000 advance room bookings for the upcoming 12 months at Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City, compared to 7,000 advance room bookings for the previous 12 months. The 97 confirmed meetings to date include Bradley Caldwell, Rita’s Italian Ice and Meeting Professionals International’s 2016 World Education Congress.
The investment in the Harrah’s Waterfront Conference Center comes at a time when there is significant demand for meetings facilities in the Northeast and no clear leader to serve the business traveler’s needs, according to Caesars Entertainment Corporation. The 100,000-sq.-ft. facility is now the largest conference-hotel complex from Baltimore to Boston, providing an attractive new option for the $280-billion national meetings industry that has a $16-billion foothold in the Northeast.
“The Waterfront Conference Center demonstrates our commitment to the revitalization of Atlantic City through major developments and investments in the booming meetings business,” said Mark Frissora, president and CEO of Caesars Entertainment Corporation. “For Atlantic City, this is an opportunity to attract a new type of customer to the city and significantly increase hotel occupancy, as well as drive revenue for local restaurants, retail outlets and other businesses.”
Designed by Friedmutter Group and located in Atlantic City’s Marina District, the Harrah’s Waterfront Conference Center can accommodate up to 5,000 attendees and has the flexibility to seamlessly convert from meetings, to banquets, to large assembly spaces. The 100,000 sq. ft. of flexible meeting space offers versatile area volume that can be broken down into 56 separate small meeting rooms with up to 300 different configurations—reception, banquet and pre-function space.