A new $1 billion airport, a face-lift for a long-established convention center, and a fleet of new hotels offering an array of meeting spaces — the coming year promises to be transformative for one of America’s favorite destinations — New Orleans.

Year in and year out, no U.S. meeting destination hosts more meetings and conventions than Las Vegas, and the most fundamental reason for its dominance is a simple one: Once known solely for its gambling and entertainment, over the last decade the city has reimagined and re-engineered itself into a destination tailor-made for meetings.

Despite a difficult few years for the Caribbean Islands hit by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, the region still managed to attract almost 30 million visitors in 2018, its second-best year ever, and the Caribbean Tourism Organization is forecasting 6-7 percent growth in tourism arrivals in 2019, as most of the damaged infrastructure in hurricane-impacted destinations returns to normal.

If Orlando could accommodate and impress the 26,000 attendees of the Microsoft Ignite event in September 2017 — and it did — chances are good that it can accommodate and impress attendees from any event and any industry, including those in the financial and insurance sectors, not to mention the planners who put those events together.

Our neighbor to the north is a fascinating bundle of contrasts: in languages, lifestyles, topography, cultures and cities.

Year in and year out, for the last 50 years, Florida has ranked high atop the list of the most popular and coveted meeting destinations in the country.

People like to meet in destinations where they can have fun after the meetings end for the day.

The Caribbean is an incredibly diverse and expansive destination comprised of some 32 countries and more than 7,000 individual islands spread across more than 1 million square miles.

With an average of 320 days of sunshine a year, more than 950 flights arriving daily and more than 150,000 hotel rooms on offer it’s not hard to understand the appeal of Las Vegas as one of the world’s top meeting destinations.

It’s no accident that Arizona has become, along with Florida and California, one of the most popular statewide meeting destinations in the U.S.