Kevin Korman, executive chef at Caliza

The beach towns of South Walton, on Florida’s Panhandle, are known for sugar-white sand, turquoise water and charming neighborhoods. Now they’re also making a name in dining: “100-mile radius cuisine.” It’s geography and philosophy combined, a belief in using Ingredients from no more than a 100-mile-radius of one’s kitchen if at all possible.

You’ve heard of farm-to-table cuisine. This is Gulf-to-table.

In South Walton, one popular ingredient makes it easy to adhere to the 100-mile rule. The Gulf of Mexico is South Walton’s front yard, and it teems with shrimp, crab, Apalachicola oysters, snapper and other fruits of the sea. Local chefs specialize in pairing them with other native flavors such as citrus salsa and avocado. No wonder famed chef Emeril LaGasse makes his home here.

The other coast got a taste of South Walton at an event at Pérez Art Museum Miami, hosted by the Walton County Tourist Development Council. Part of BlogHer Food, an annual conference for food bloggers around the nation, the dinner starred three South Walton executive chefs and small plates of their best work. Michael Guerra, executive chef at The Pearl hotel in Rosemary Beach, served seared Florida blue crab cakes with jicama and candied ginger slaw. Kevin Korman, executive chef at Caliza Restaurant in Alys Beach, created seared Gulf shrimp with fingerling potato & castelvetrano salad with chili & salumi mostarda and kalamata “paint.” Dan Vargo, executive chef at Seagar’s In the Hilton Sandestin Beach Golf Resort & Spa In Destin, provided his Emerald Coast Duo of Tartare with citrus & herb-marinarted tuna & snapper, fork-crusted avocado, citrus salsa and crisp trotilla.

Small groups are In luck when it comes to these three. The Pearl hotel has meeting space for up to 120; Seagar’s has private dining space for groups of up to 30. As for Caliza, its poolside dining draws a crowd most nights.

The event also featured Chaste No. 850, a rum-based cocktail created by craft-spirits company Chaste in Santa Rosa Beach. And noted South Walton artist Justin Gaffrey demonstrated his “sculpting with paint” technique.

The evening provided a feast for all senses, all in all.

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KLM Royal Dutch Airways offers a revolutionary way to develop new business relationships with its “Meet & Seat” program where you can choose who you sit next to based on someone’s social media profile.

The program is only available on KLM.com for individual bookings on flights to and from Amsterdam. Once your flight is booked, you log into your My Trip account up until one hour before departure. Submit either your Facebook or LinkedIn account and you’ll then be able to see other passengers’ social media profiles who are also participating in Meet & Seat.

This is a cool way to discover who else is on the flight, and which passengers share similar interests and/or work in a field aligned with your own business interests.

You can even sign up to receive an email three days before departure to see who else has joined Meet & Seat on your flight. So far, over 50,000 people have shared their personal identities. Let us know in the comments if you’ve participated in Meet & Seat and what you thought of the program.

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Rose Hall Great House, Montego Bay

You can utter her name three times fast, but I don’t recommend it. Not that the White Witch of Montego Bay would mind—locals say she loves ‘rising’ to the occasion. During a recent tour of the legendary 18th century Rose Hall Great House, one of the most popular tours in Jamaica, sordid tales of lust, murder and mystery took over the otherwise mellow night. It all surrounded Annie Palmer, whose former mistress to ghost in residence legacy made for an intriguing, albeit unsettling, 30-minute tour.

The beautifully restored Georgian plantation, set amidst 6,600 acres of lush Caribbean land, returned to its former glory through the stories of knowledgeable local guides. The tour wraps around most of the building, including the dungeon, now transformed into the Annie’s Pub tavern. The tavern’s famous “Witches Brew” rum cocktail is said to protect against the ghosts and black magic that still linger in the mansion from Palmer’s grisly heyday. Day and evening tours are available, depending on the ‘effect’ you wish to instill.

The 2,000-acre Good Hope Plantation and Estate House in Falmouth is thrilling in its own right. Here, amongst the beautifully restored grounds of this former sugar estate, groups can swing through the trees on a White Witch zip line tour, have Appleton Estate rum tastings, tube down a natural slide from an ancient aqueduct or take in the sites by carriage. It’s all made possible through local tour operator Chukka. One of the more intriguing team building options is an obstable course that expands every which way including high into the trees. After exploring an ancient factory, pottery barn and waterwheel, the pottery of local artist David Pinto will feel like a “must buy.”

The 250-year-old Great House is a soothing spot to unwind with High Tea full spread, as it was intended. It’s such a memorable experience that Disney Cruise Lines lists it as a port adventure.

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Opus Hotel Vancouver, ‘Pierre’ guest room

The quaint and cheeky Opus Hotel in Vancouver offers guests something they’ll be hard-pressed to find elsewhere: their perfect match. This is how I met Pierre, a conscientious food critic slash jazz junky from Paris with a soft spot for culinary tourism and bright orange walls. Pierre was my room’s “persona,” one of five fictional lifestyle concierges at the hotel, and boy was he full of surprises.

Each of the Opus’ 96 rooms reflect the style of their avant-garde alter ego—from bold fabric patterns, colors and art choices to Pop Rocks and Pez dispenser turn-downs. iPads are on the house during your stay—Deluxe rooms and higher also toss in a Samsung smartphone. And holding true to its “Trendiest Hotel in Canada” TripAdvisor accolade, both devices can be taken out of the hotel at leisure thanks to internal mobile sticks that provide uninterrupted citywide internet.

“The iPads are meant to mirror what our guests’ tablets or iPads are like at home,” General Manager Nicholas Gandossi says. “We loaded some fun and useful apps like Angry Birds and Google Maps—they have become true virtual concierges with our guests now using them to explore the city.”

Opus smartphones offer cost-conscious travelers an additional perk: any calls to their rooms ring through their Samsungs wherever they are in Vancouver. We’re reassured that all of the data/browsing history accumulated on the devices is erased at checkout.

Planners can expect two flexible meeting rooms with a combined capacity for 75 people. The vibrancy found throughout the hotel is maintained in the space through rich colors, a wall of windows and customized themes that reflect the tone and purpose of your meeting—from a high-end boardroom setting to designer lounge furniture and gelled mood lighting. At the hotel’s new La Pentola della Quercia restaurant, groups of up to 60 can feast on Chef Lucais Syme’s Northern Italian fare. Each table has its own menu that is tailored to individual tastes, reflecting a family dining theme that sets the stage for group synergy. The Kaiserschmarrn (Northern Italian pancakes) with raisins, pine nuts and cream will have your group singing “Figaro!” in no time.

With Yaletown, one of Vancouver’s hippest areas as a backdrop, you’ll definitely want to schedule downtime to hit the streets. The former warehouse district, once festooned with textile shops, factories and train yards, has been undergoing a major revamp for over 20 years. Converted heritage buildings vaunt industrial chic boutiques, restaurants, sidewalk cafes and a booming nightlife scene amidst parks, marinas and high-rise apartment blocks. The Opus provides complimentary luxury hotel car service in the downtown core and mountain bikes for exploring this fresh and interesting area at whim.

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Hosting the Green Meetings Industry Council’s (GMIC) Sustainable Green Meetings Conference in San Francisco made quite the statement. The city has completely eliminated the use of water bottles at conferences (and the use of Styrofoam and plastic bags citywide for that matter), and is currently on track toward zero waste by 2020.

“We work with SF Travel quite a bit and have a basic checklist of what meeting planners should do,” says Shawn Rosenmoss, senior environmental specialist for the San Francisco Department of the Environment. “San Francisco is seen as a leader in the field, but we’re mouthing off about it a lot, and a lot of people aren’t, so I think some of it is understanding what other cities are actually doing.”

Rosenmoss says San Francisco’s stringent green business program gives planners a list of the city’s 180 greenest businesses—an easy first step in finding green suppliers. Mandatory recycling and composting in all buildings is also the norm. At the Moscone Center, for instance, leftover food waste from conferences is either donated to local organizations or composted. Plus, the 60,000-sf solar generation project atop Moscone South gives solar power back to the city’s electric grid.

In nearby Monterey, a.k.a. the “salad bowl capital of the world,” 13 weekly farmers markets keep a farm-to-fork mentality going strong. We’re told that Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program was a pioneer in linking dining behavior to ocean health, which led to the use of responsible seafood menus across the country.

The Monterey Regional Waste Management District guarantees that county events will either be low waste or have a zero landfill impact. For those meetings that can’t mitigate a zero or near-zero waste event, the Offset Project’s Monterey Bay Carbon Fund pays for carbon offsets, which go to local renewable energy projects, says Sylecia Johnston, MTA, destination marketing/group sales for the Monterey County Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Sustainability has also been part of the Keystone, Colorado, culture since long before “recycling was sexy,” says David Sackmann, senior national sales manager for the Keystone Resort & Conference Center. Sackmann made that point clear by offering to donate $5 to San Francisco’s Friends of the Urban Forest foundation for every business card he received at the GMIC conference.

“Because we operate within the national forest system, we give guests the opportunity to donate a dollar to the National Forest Foundation upon registration,” says Sackmann. “In Colorado, we’ve had water issues for 100 years, so for years and years we’ve been promoting low-flow fixtures in our rooms, and we have had highly efficient laundry services years before the sustainability movement even launched.”

Singapore is another destination that continues to make green advancements in the MICE industry—the nation’s infrastructure alone showcases its commitment to sustainability.

“We built our city in a garden,” says Tiong Heng Chew, Singapore Tourism Board’s executive director of business tourism development. “If you were to take a satellite picture of Singapore, 50 percent of the land is covered by greenery. The green value proposition we have for our visitors isn’t just at the property level, but the destination level.”

Kevin Teng, director of sustainability at the 2,560-room Marina Bay Sands (MBS) in Singapore, says a $25 million high-tech system that allows hotel staff to control lighting, heating and water supplies from more than 60,000 control points is one of the property’s highlights. Low-flow fixtures reduce water consumption by about 92 million gallons a year. Teng said that a green culture across property operations is key to sustainability.

The Global Sands Eco360 program created by parent company Las Vegas Sands Corp, certainly embraces Teng’s idea. More than 50 percent of MBS staff members participate in sustainability initiatives.

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Houmas House, Louisiana

The Grand Fancy Dress Anniversary Ball was one of the first big events held in Louisiana’s Old State Capitol building. The castle-like building carved out a grand convening spot along the Mississippi River for government officials in the 1850s. Ascending the 32-step cast-iron spiral staircase, your delegates will undoubtedly imagine the governors, legislators and high-society women in their hoop skirts and ball gowns who swept lazily up and down the stairs. Soaring high above, a 2,000-pane stained-glass rotunda with an umbrella-shaped dome squeezes out shafts of light onto wood beams and black and white marble flooring with a kaleidoscopic effect. The Gothic-inspired space seems made for cocktails, socializing, meet and greets or events which require a dramatic grand entrance.

“The building itself is our greatest artifact,” Jan Sumrall, the property’s business manager remarks, adding that political fund raisers, corporate meetings and presentations have all been held in the House and Senate chambers.

The chambers offer planners the striking ambiance of hardwood flooring, lofty ceilings and floor-to-ceiling stained-glass windows—the House, with its tiered, 200-seat auditorium and the flexibly designed Senate, a multifaceted space for reception-style events for up to 180 people.

Throughout the years, the Old State Capitol building has survived fire, war, scandal and the occasional brawl. Question is: Will your groups survive the building?

A new 4D experience places groups face to face with the ghost of Sarah Morgan, an authentic Civil War-era figure who narrates a vivid 12-minute journey through the building’s tumultuous past. The “Ghost of the Castle” experience includes floating, lifelike images and special effects that surround the audience. Sumrall says the presentation really builds interest in a subject that may otherwise seem lackluster. “It’s kind of like you’re getting a history lesson, but you don’t realize it during the show.”

Just a 30-minute drive from Baton Rouge along the big bend of the Mississippi River, the Houmas House Plantation and Gardens continues this theme of “haunting” beauty. The historic mansion has been backdrop to numerous movies and TV shows, hosting fan favs such as Bette Davis, Cicely Tyson and soap diva Susan Lucci. Still, what’s often most talked about at the end of the day on this historic site are the “sightings.” No spoilers—you’ll just have to experience this one.

Meticulously preserved grounds, seven knockout venues, local cuisines, antique furnishings and artwork and over 38 acres of wispy and winding gardens give nod to the plantation’s antebellum days. Owner Kevin Kelly has made it easy to step into the shoes of the plantation’s early Sugar Barons through immersive tours and dinners and property-wide buyout options.

The property’s popularity and proximity to Baton Rouge has sparked the development of 11 new cottages, which will elevate the room count from 20 to 49. A life-size replica of the promenade deck and pilot house deck of a grand Steamboat will also settle in soon. Larger groups can bunk in some of the 8,000 hotel rooms up for grabs in Baton Rouge.

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Sandals Emerald Bay

Best known for weddings and romantic getaways, Sandals Resorts is putting out the word that there’s more than honeymoons happening at its 15 properties. (Three other properties, with a fourth coming soon, make up Sandals’ family-oriented sister company, Beaches Resorts.)

The company has been hosting meetings and incentives for more than two decades, notes Vice President of Group Sales Jim Bullock. “From the very beginning, we have focused on the total experience, which is delivered with an all-inclusive package. We are excited about the impact and opportunities we are creating in the meetings and incentives segment. We are proving to be a fresh new alternative for organizations that realize how ideal our destinations are for meetings and incentives.”

Incentives still make up much of the resorts’ group business, and at the well-known Sandals brand they’re easy, says Bullock: “Carve out four hours in the day to talk about the previous year and how they achieved success, then have them go off and enjoy themselves.” As for meeting space, it varies from island to island. Among the more meetings-focused properties are Sandals’ two resorts in the Bahamas, each with its own take on Caribbean cool.

Sandals Royal Bahamian Spa Resort & Offshore Island

If the “Royal” in the Sandals Royal Bahamian name has you thinking of stuffy old aristocrats, gather ’round for one of the nightly sing-alongs in the Piano Bar. Or come out to the Junkanoo party by the pool. Be prepared for any number of jolly encounters at Sandals’ Nassau property, including an impromptu visit from one of the local schools’ marching bands. At Sandals Royal Bahamian, the accent is on the playful Caribbean side of the resort’s British-Bahamian roots.

This is the place for groups who want to kick back and have a laugh with that uniquely British blend of gentility and earthiness. One night you might dine in the formal Baccarat restaurant, named for the fine crystal throughout; the next, you’re sharing a pint and a plate of fish & chips at Cricketer’s Pub.

The pub is authentic; Sandals founder Gordon “Butch” Stewart discovered it in England, bought it, had it taken apart and shipped it to Nassau, where it was reassembled and now welcomes all.

Royal Bahamian’s accommodations total 404 rooms and suites in 26 categories. They include the Royal Village, a charming collection of villas named after the flowers that surround them. (Groups with a love for flowers may want to take one of the newly added garden tours by the grounds manager.)

There’s more than 9,000 sf in the Fred Krasner Conference Center, with room for up to 540 pax banquet-style and 1,000 pax theater-style. “Meetings are a big focus for us,” says Shellie Norton, Royal Bahamian sales manager.

Royal Bahamian has the added allure of its offshore island, accessible by a 15-minute ferry ride. Its separate-but-nearby location makes it popular for corporate events, and it has all the tropical treats: two beaches with hammocks and cabanas, water sports, a pool with swim-up bar, a restaurant, a spa with options for waterside treatments, and a Zen garden with fire-pit seating.

Sandals Emerald Bay Golf Resort & Spa

Located on the serene island of Great Exuma, Sandals Emerald Bay is made—literally—for relaxing. Where Royal Bahamian is jolly and carefree, Emerald Bay goes for tranquility; one end of the property is officially designated as a quiet zone.

Not that fun is frowned upon. Emerald Bay has its share of excitement from water sports like snorkeling and sailing, and it has the swim-up bar that’s become almost mandatory. at tropical resorts. But the atmosphere, while casual and relaxed, is even more adult than at many of the other couples-only resorts.

The resort offers 245 rooms and suites in 21 categories. All are located on the beach or are a short stroll away, a convenient factor for groups. The resort’s tennis facility has six Har-Tru courts and a sunken stadium court for competition; the par-72 golf course was designed by Greg Norman.

Emerald Bay has seven dining choices, from the ultra-casual Barefoot by the Sea to the romantic, reservations-required La Parisienne. More fun-loving groups will enjoy gathering after hours at The Drunken Duck, a classic English spot with a clubby billiards room and traditional pub fare on the menu. Get there early to grab a seat if there’s a football match on (that’s soccer season to the Yanks in the crowd, of course).

For meetings, Emerald Bay has 9,000 sf of flexible indoor space and more than 21,000 sf of outdoor space. The 5,500-sf ballroom accommodates up to 289 pax classroom-style and 393 for banquets.

Below: Massage at the water’s edge, Sandals Royal Bahamian 

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