New Meetings Industry Emerges After a Boom and Bust | nytimes.com

BACK in the boom years, I used to attend many of the major travel industry trade shows, which were always held in places with monstrous convention centers like Las Vegas, New Orleans and Orlando, Fla. And the parties they threw at night! I remember one where a big travel company rented Sea World for a lavish reception for hundreds of people, with Champagne, ice sculptures and a special performance by whales leaping into the air.