Smart Meetings

The city, like the surrounding desert, is a rainbow of color and culture, with bright adobe houses, charming marketplaces, mariachi music and spectacular sunsets, as well as luxurious spas and some of the best golf in the country. If you’re hungry, you’ll be able to find a wide variety of Mexican and Southwest cuisine almost anywhere you look.

With 205,000 sq. ft. of meeting space—including a 20,000-square-foot ballroom—the Tucson Convention Center (tucsonaz.gov/tcc) can accommodate almost any trade show, meeting or convention. Before committing to a meeting long distance, you can take advantage of the Metropolitan Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau’s (visittucson.org) You Fly, We Buy program, where meeting planners are flown to the city, put up at a hotel and given site tours to get a sense of the facilities and accommodations.

Tucson’s many unique venues also offer your group a one-of-a-kind meeting experience found nowhere else in the country. The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (desertmuseum.org) features a world-renowned zoo, botanical garden and natural history museum. Hold a meeting or reception in the museum’s event space, accommodating between 30 and 80 people. And be sure to explore almost two miles of paths—you might find yourself up close with mountain lions, prairie dogs and Gila Monsters, as well as more than 300 species of animals.

Or, for an authentic cowboy experience, hold your meeting at one of Tucson’s renowned guest ranches: The Lazy K Guest Ranch (lazykbar.com); White Stallion Ranch (wsranch-.com); or Tanque Verde Ranch (tanqueverderanch.com). For fun, divide your group for a team cattle-penning activity, where you’ll ride horses into a herd in an effort to cut three cows away from the group and into a pen.

And if you get at least a day to yourself before or after your meeting, take an hour and a half drive southwest of Tucson to Tombstone, and tour the O.K. Corral (okcorral.com), where the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday fought the McLaurys and the Clantons in the legendary shoot-out. For an (almost) real-life dose of history, stick around for the re-enactment of the gun fight, performed several times daily.

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Getting There

Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (skyharboraiport.com) is served by 19 airlines with nonstop service to more than 100 U.S. cities. Tucson International Airport (tucsonairport.org) is served by 11 airlines with nonstop services to 17 cities and connections to more than 121 destinations. Back to Top

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