🔒Taking A Gamble: InsurTech Hartford the latest CT Convention Center event to land at Mohegan Sun

Hartford is losing a signature insurance industry event, InsurTech Hartford Symposium, to the allure of Mohegan Sun, amid growing competition between convention centers in the region.

Held at the Connecticut Convention Center since 2019, InsurTech Hartford is the most recent example of a large event to move from downtown Hartford to Uncasville.

While InsurTech Hartford will retain the Capital City in its name, the annual symposium will take place at the resort and casino’s Earth Expo & Convention Center on May 2 and 3 of 2023.

Other recent high-profile events to depart from the Convention Center were the Connecticut International Auto Show, which relocated to Mohegan’s newly-built expo center in 2018, and the Connecticut Boat Show, which docked at the casino in 2019.

Stacey Brown, founder of InsurTech Hartford, said he decided to move the event for a multitude of reasons, but largely because he sees Mohegan Sun as a more attractive destination for out-of-state attendees as Hartford continues to recover from the pandemic lull.

“We’re seeing signs of a comeback, but you know, these things get planned like a year in advance,” Brown said. “And as an organizer, it’s hard to speculate that a year from now Hartford is going to be bustling again.”

The first InsurTech Hartford Symposium in 2019 drew 275 to 300 people, he said. This year’s event, in April, brought in 700. Next year, organizers expect roughly twice as many people, with 1,200 to 1,500 attendees.

Brown said he wanted to keep the event in the Hartford area, but believes Mohegan Sun will be more of a draw for the industry-wide event with a global reach.

Mohegan Sun, with its own police and fire departments, hotels, restaurants and entertainment, is like a city in a confined space — and that has its advantages in terms of keeping attendees engaged. For example, attendees will be less likely to run back to their Hartford office, often just a block or two away, after lunch.

“By putting it in this venue, it’s a captive location,” Brown said. “People will have to travel to be there. And once they’re there, they really won’t be going anywhere.”

Mohegan Sun averages 20,000 visitors a day, said Charles Bunnell, chief of staff for the Mohegan Tribe. There are about 2,000 hotel rooms on-site, with shuttle service to nearby lodging.

The Connecticut Convention Center has a 2,339-space parking garage and is connected to the Hartford Marriott Downtown, which has 409 rooms.

But Hartford’s downtown restaurants, hotels and parking spaces seem to fill up quickly when there are large events, Brown said. The Marriott sold out of rooms during the 2022 event, he added — a sign the symposium has a limited ability to grow in the downtown Hartford space.

Brown praised the Connecticut Convention Center facility and isn’t opposed to moving the event back, if that’s what attendees prefer. But an added benefit of the venue change is that there’s a cost savings, he said.

“I’d say this is an experiment of sorts where, moving outside of Hartford, we want to see what type of audience that will bring, but the thinking is, it’ll help us attract a more global audience,” Brown said. “Hartford right now doesn’t have a venue that looks like and feels like Mohegan Sun. There are a lot of nice places in town. But it’s just a different class and different scale of venue.”

More events, competition

Officials from the Convention Center and Mohegan Sun declined to provide their rates, but said their prices are comparable. The venues negotiate an agreement with each event organizer.

Certain “enhancements” can be negotiated to entice organizers to use the Convention Center, said Michael Costelli, general manager of the facility.

“I think generally speaking, there’s this perception that Mohegan Sun is cheaper, but when you boil it down, and really look at apples to apples, that’s not necessarily the case,” Costelli said. “I will say, unfortunately, they have free parking and a heck of a lot of it, so that does become a challenge.”

Costelli said the Convention Center is set to host 92 events during fiscal 2023, surpassing the 70 it anticipated as it recovers from the pandemic. During the shutdown, the center was twice used as a hospital overflow facility and provided access to 100,000 COVID-19 vaccinations.

Recently, the Convention Center’s “Beyond Van Gogh” exhibit attracted 80,000 people, beating expectations by 30,000, he said.

Before the pandemic, the Convention Center hosted 180 to 200 events a year. Costelli is optimistic those numbers will return.

“I don’t want to get too overly excited because again, I think a full recovery is going to take another probably three years,” Costelli said. “… You have to remember our booking window to begin with is two to three years out, sometimes four years out. So, it takes time for that to catch back up.”

When the Connecticut Convention Center opened in 2004 as part of the $775 million Adriaen’s Landing development project, it was the only facility of its kind. Mohegan Sun opened its Earth Expo & Convention Center, which features 125,000 square feet of exhibit space, in May 2018. Combined with its Sky Convention Center, Mohegan now has 275,000 square feet of event space.

The 540,000-square-foot Connecticut Convention Center bills itself as one of the largest event venues between New York City and Boston, with 140,000 square feet of exhibition space, along with a 40,000-square-foot ballroom and 25,000 square feet of flexible meeting space.

Foxwoods has several event spaces and ballrooms of different sizes. A $25 million Bristol Event Center is expected to debut in the first quarter of 2023.

“For many years, we had all of the public shows that were around,” Costelli said. “We had everything.”

Now, there is more competition among convention centers, which means losing some events while gaining others.

“The competition is a good thing, because I think it adds more vibrancy to the overall state …,” Costelli said. “Quite often, we’ll get groups that don’t want to be in a casino because, for a number of reasons, just their image, or their demographic doesn’t want that kind of environment. So, they want to be in a convention or a large public meeting facility.”

He touted the cultural experience Hartford offers — including a walkable downtown imbued with history, the state Capitol, Dunkin’ Donuts Park, a strong arts scene and other landmarks — as advantages to the Connecticut Convention Center.

“They (Mohegan Sun) aren’t able to offer the personal or the cultural experience that you have in being in a downtown city as historically significant as Hartford,” Costelli said.

Insurance influence

Brown said he sees hope for Hartford with recent investments in downtown, but the city needs to update its offerings. With similar insurance industry events in Las Vegas and Austin, Texas, InsurTech Hartford needs to offer perks beyond just going out to a restaurant for dinner.

InsurTech Hartford organizes insurance industry events across the state, but the annual symposium is its largest. The organization plans to host a “pre-event reception” in Hartford before the 2023 symposium, but details have not yet been announced.

“We’re not running away from Hartford, we want to continue to make Hartford, known for its strength in insurance, an asset,” Brown said. “It’s a community asset. You can’t make that go away just by running a single conference at a destination location.”

While some people have questioned whether Hartford is losing its stature in the insurance industry, Brown, who works for an insurance company, said Connecticut’s capital remains important.

“Hartford is highly relevant to the industry as much as the industry is highly relevant to Hartford,” Brown said. “And, what we need to do, I believe, as a community is find our spot and make it a destination for people to come and be known as a place where business gets done in insurance.”

There’s less competition between Mohegan Sun and the Connecticut Convention Center for events than there is between Connecticut exposition centers and those in New York City and Boston, Bunnell said.

Ultimately, bringing tourism to Connecticut benefits Mohegan Sun, even when visitors land in Hartford, he explained.

“I would tell you at the highest level, the Mohegan Tribe is part of the larger Connecticut tourism community,” Bunnell said. “And whatever we can do to bring in anybody to the state of Connecticut is a win for everybody. And frankly, we are not shy to tell people if they are indicating to us that maybe it’s not a perfect fit, that a great place to look is Hartford.”

Bunnell sees the casino’s expo center and Connecticut Convention Center as complementary. For instance, a person traveling to Mohegan Sun might arrive at Bradley International Airport and stop in Hartford on their way.

“You’re going to see the Science Center, maybe you’re going to see a game at the baseball field,” Bunnell said. “It’s good for all of us. And the more we stick together and fight together, the stronger we’re going to be as a state.”