Meet up at the Renaissance Resort at World Golf Village in northeast Florida

We recently published a story I did comparing two of the Jacksonville, Fla. area’s most iconic golf Meccas. One is the famed Sawgrass Marriott Resort and Beach Club, home of the TPC Sawgrass; the other is The Renaissance Resort at World Golf Village, which includes the World Golf Hall of Fame as well as two really good golf courses.

The story runs down the golf, the restaurants, accommodations and all the usual stuff that these two world-class destinations offer. But one thing I didn’t really go into detail on was the meeting space, at which The Renaissance Resort at World Golf Village in St. Augustine, with its own convention center, really excels.

Confirming that is the fact that the Renaissance Resort and Convention Center just received Association Meetings magazine’s “Inner Circle Award” for 2011. Together with the adjacent World Golf Hall of Fame, The Renaissance World Golf Village Resort and Convention Center is the largest combination hotel and convention center between Atlanta and Orlando, with 101,000 square feet of meeting and event space.

Considered one of the most prestigious awards in the meetings industry, the “Inner Circle Award” is determined by Association Meetings magazine’s readers, who voted for the top hotels, resorts, convention centers, convention & visitor bureaus, and tourist boards in the United States and Canada that were the best at servicing their meetings and conventions from July 2010 to June 2011. The Renaissance World Golf Village Resort and Convention Center is one of only 40 resorts or hotels in the United States chosen to receive the award.

The resort’s offerings also include a recent renovation and expansion of its outdoor meeting, event and recreational space, which was completed in September. The large project included new and expanded outdoor function space with brick pavers, new furnishings and a new fountain as well as a new and expanded pool deck with new seating areas. The new outdoor function space, now named La Terrazza, is able to accommodate groups of up to 500 guests. With this expansion, the resort added 15,000 square feet of new function space.

For information on The Renaissance World Golf Village Resort and Convention Center, click here.