Because hotels are the most common choice that businesses make when it comes to choosing a meeting facility, some companies like to avoid having their meetings in hotels. www.UniqueVenues.com specializes in connecting companies with interesting and distinctive venues. They have a print guidebook as well as a web site, for ease of selecting a venue. Their slogan, "if it's not a hotel, you'll find it here," really says it all. This company offers venues in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
HQ is one of the most commonly used companies to find meeting space as well as other types of temporary office space. They have 750 meeting room locations (which breaks down to 3700 individual meeting rooms) in 60 countries, and can accommodate meetings of between two and 50 people.
If you have had a good experience with a certain meeting room provider in the past, you may be able to set up repeat meetings easily through that company's website or through a quick phone call. For example, if you have done many meetings at a local Marriott hotel and found that it met your needs, look on www.Marriott.com for information about more facilities in other cities where you might need to hold meetings.
The IACC, the International Association of Conference Centers, applies certain standards to certify certain conference centers and allow them membership in the association. For very professional conference centers that are dedicated to hosting meetings (rather than being chiefly a hotel or other organization that also happens to host meetings), search for accredited conference centers through the IACC web site.