In-Tents Events

Many meeting planners still think of tents as being linked with carnival barkers. Your childhood memories of pronto pups served out of tents at the Minnesota State Fair, however, aren’t representative of the current tent industry. Those dusty old canvas huts have been replaced by more sophisticated, versatile structures.

According to Ryan Dillon, director of operations for the 3M Championship golf tournament, tents economically combine the beauty of an outdoor setting with the creature comforts of a permanent building: “Tents provide our sponsors with a nice, air-conditioned, well-lit place to wine and dine the customers.” Today’s tents are designed to endure extreme weather and stay up indefinitely. For high-profile events, luxury décor items, such as French doors with hydraulic closers, hardwood floors, intelligent lighting, and fabric swags, can be combined to create a venue unlike any other.

Finding Favor

Tents have the advantage when it comes to location. “You can have your meeting virtually anywhere,” says Ted Ewing, president of Skyway Event Services, a tent rental firm in Minneapolis. “If a company wants a meeting or other event at their headquarters, they can have it there without disrupting the regular office, and still give tours at their location. [The event] can be at a location downtown, out of town, on private or public land.”

And tents are part of some high-profile events. Each year, ProLinks Sports, a golf-management company, manages the 3M Championship, a PGA Champions Tour tournament held at the Tournament Players Club in Blaine. This is difficult, Dillon says, because the event is consistently rated number one by players, number of attendees, and sponsor dollars. Weekly attendance for the event averages 120,000. Tents are a large part of the equation, keeping guests sheltered from the sun and providing a special space for VIPs. “We have a 100-by-130-foot tent, catering inside, and prime seating on the 18th green,” Dillon says. The 27 or so tents used at the tournament may be furnished with wall-to-wall carpeting, glass walls facing the course, halogen lighting, and air conditioning, depending on use.

Event planners can exercise their creativity in tents, which are natural chameleons. “Beyond the idea that you are creating protection from the elements, the tent provides you with the unique ability to take a blank slate and create an environment,” says David Graves, senior vice president of events at MetroConnections, a Minneapolis-based event-management company.

Graves recently planned an event for Target with a complicated tent setup. The event took place at Peavey Plaza, a downtown Minneapolis park with a fountain, reflecting pool, and terraced landscaping. The plaza’s multiple levels make for a dramatic setting, but didn’t leave much room for the orchestral event. “The facility drained the pond . . . because that was the only space large enough for the event,” Graves says. Elevated flooring was placed over the pool with a tent on top of that.