Sea Suite

The Four Seasons Resort Palm Beach’s saltwater infinity pool is steps from the shoreline.

It would be impossible to see all 39 towns and cities that make up The Palm Beaches in just one three-day fam trip. But our host, Discover The Palm Beaches, packed in enough visits to hotels and event venues to give me and my fellow meetings-industry journalists and third-party event planners from around the U.S. a sense of the destination as a whole. Our group’s visit in late August included tours of new and newly renovated properties, elevated dining experiences, and, of course, stunning ocean views everywhere we turned.

Sunshine State of Mind

After landing at Palm Beach International airport, it was a quick hop over to the Opal Grand Resort and Spa in Delray Beach to join my group for a property tour. The resort was last renovated in 2021 and has 30,000 square feet of total meeting space and ballrooms that can be configured for large and small groups. The 2,244-square-foot Coral Reef Ballroom can accommodate up to 120 attendees; the Seacrest Ballroom has 8,184 square feet of space and soaring 17-foot ceilings — enough room for up to 650 guests for banquet-style events; and the Opal Grand’s oceanfront terrace, which wraps around the pool deck, is a popular option for groups of up to 350 attendees. For small groups of 75 or less, beautiful views and sea breezes can be enjoyed on the rooftop.

After the tour, our group enjoyed lunch together in the well-appointed private room at the Opal Grand’s Drift Kitchen & Bar. I had the spicy fish tacos — and the fresh-catch filets paired with charred corn relish, crispy slaw, and cilantro crema wrapped in warmed tortillas were the perfect way to kick off three days at the seaside. The same culinary team behind the restaurant — which is popular with locals and hotel guests alike — oversees the property’s catering for meetings and events.

Next, we headed over to The Boca Raton to check in to our rooms before a tour of the property’s guest rooms and 97,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor meeting space. The resort dates back to 1926, when it opened as the $1.25-million Cloister Inn — equivalent to around $23 million today — in the newly incorporated town of Boca Raton. The hotel’s 1,047 rooms and suites are distributed throughout separate buildings, the Beach Club, the Cloister, the Tower, and the Yacht Club — each with its own venues for groups.

The Boca Raton has a wide variety of indoor and outdoor spaces for group events.

We started off in the 27-story Tower building, which has three 576-square-foot boardrooms for small groups, and then toured the Mizner Center, an 80,000-square-foot on-site conference center named for Addison Mizner, the noted Boca Raton architect who founded the resort. Its largest ballroom measures 26,037 square feet and can accommodate up to 270 guests for receptions and theater-style events. There’s also the 10,200-square-foot Royal Palm Ballroom, the 4,726-square-foot Addison Ballroom, and the 3,895-square-foot Estate Ballroom, as well as a number of smaller meeting rooms for groups and board meetings. The Tower’s outdoor event spaces include the 3,000-square-foot Spanish Terrace and the rolling 9,700-square-foot Grand Lawn.

The historic Cloister building was first built in 1926 as a 100-room hotel, and we toured the 6,045-square-foot Cathedral Room, where the property’s first guests would have attended religious services, marveling at the soaring vaulted ceilings and painstakingly preserved historic details like the gilded mosaic. Also in the Cloister is the 1,944-square-foot Mizner Room, perfect for groups of up to 200 attendees, and the beautifully cultivated 6,300-square-foot Cloister Garden.

The Boca Raton’s Yacht Club has a varied mix of meeting venues spread out over 200 acres of landscaped lawns overlooking the water. Our group explored the beautifully appointed 2,230-square-foot Grand Venetian Ballroom, which has a sweeping terrace that is also available for private events; the 1,935-square-foot Amalfi Room and its 462-square-foot terrace; the 1,212-square-foot Capri Room, 1,113-square-foot Santa Margherita Room, and the 890-square foot Portofino Room.

Finally, we toured the Beach Club, fresh off a 2024 renovation, and offering a variety of spaces for groups. The 4,575-square-foot Atlantic Ballroom can be rented alone or in conjunction with the 1,907-square-foot Atlantic Terrace and 305-square-foot Atlantic Foyer, and there are a number of smaller spaces for board meetings and offsites. The Beach Club’s outdoor meeting spaces include the sweeping 41,447-square-foot Cabana Pool Lawn and 3,763-square-foot Surfside Lawn, as well as the pool deck, which can host 1,714 guests for a seated event and 3,428 for cocktail receptions.

After taking in all those places and spaces, we had worked up an appetite. We headed to the private dining room at the on-site Flamingo Grill. Our four-course dinner included many of the restaurant’s signature dishes, including a classic crab cake with mustard remoulade, a tomato and watermelon salad dressed with sherry vinaigrette, and roasted salmon with a black pepper and horseradish sauce.

Rooms With a View

Our group’s second day in the Palm Beaches kicked off with a tour of the gorgeous Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa in South Palm Beach. The property has 309 guest rooms and 30,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor meeting space and opened in 1993 as a Ritz-Carlton resort before becoming independent in 2013. Our tour included the 9,680-square-foot Grand Ballroom, the 2,666-square-foot Plaza Ballroom, the 2,441-square-foot Ocean Ballroom — all with state-of-the-art built-in sound systems — and the 3,775-square-foot Pool Level, as well as a number of smaller rooms. We walked around the property’s outdoor meeting spaces, which include the 5,000-square-foot Resort Lawn & Pool, the 3,000-square-foot Courtyard Lawn & Pool, and the 1,800-square-foot Oceanfront Lawn, and then had breakfast at Angle, one of the resort’s restaurants — I dined on avocado toast and a cold-pressed green juice on ice, like an athlete attending spring training.

It wasn’t exactly spring training, but we were getting our steps in. We next visited the Four Seasons Resort Palm Beach, the only Forbes Five-Star, AAA Five-Diamond resort on Palm Beach Island. We toured the property’s 21,128 square feet of event space, including the 6,000-square-foot Royal Poinciana Ballroom with an attached 1,600-square-foot foyer, and the 6,000-square-foot Banyan Ballroom, connected to a 2,436-square-foot foyer. The two ballrooms can be combined for a buyout floor and smaller spaces are available for groups of up to 150 attendees.

After our whirlwind tour of the Four Seasons, we skipped across town to the Hilton West Palm Beach to see the resort’s 35,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor meeting space. The property underwent a $25-million renovation in 2023 and has a direct, indoor connection to the Palm Beach County Convention Center. The event spaces we toured included the 13,336-square-foot Oceana Ballroom, 5,580-square-foot Coral Ballroom, and lovely meeting rooms suitable for smaller groups. The property’s outdoor meeting venues include two event lawns and the 20,000-square-foot Pool Deck, which can accommodate more than 800 attendees for a cocktail reception. After the tour, we enjoyed a hands-on lunch at Galley, one of the property’s on-site restaurants, where we joined up with the Hilton’s catering staff to roll and toss pizza dough for three gourmet pies — classic Margherita, spicy pepperoni, and mushroom-truffle with Alfredo sauce.

Then we were off to the Palm Beach County Convention Center for a facility tour and showcase of local hotels — we learned that there are more than 14,000 walkable guest rooms within the 35,000-square-foot convention center’s shadow. Once we had finished meeting with the hotel partners gathered for the showcase, we were in for a sweet treat: a sugar-cookie decoration class with Food Network star Jamal Lake, the talent behind Ganache Bakery in West Palm Beach. He patiently assisted as we applied brightly colored icing to freshly baked cookies shaped like stars, palm trees, and even Lilly Pulitzer–style dresses, a nod to the eponymous Palm Beach boutique and its characteristically bright, floral-print resort wear.

Our final stop of the day and where we spent the night was the legendary PGA National Resort. After checking in to newly refurbished rooms, we met in the lobby for a property tour. The resort can accommodate groups as small as 10 or as large as 1,100 attendees, thanks to its 60,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor meeting space. We wandered through the 9,990-square-foot PGA Ballroom, 4,140-square-foot British Ballroom, 3,330-square-foot Masters Ballroom, and several smaller venues before sitting down to dinner on site at The Butcher’s Club, helmed by Florida native and James Beard Award-nominee Jeremy Ford. The four-course, shared plates dinner included crowd-pleasing favorites like filet mignon, spicy rigatoni, truffle chicken, and jumbo crab cakes, topped off with key lime tarts and fudge brownies served with ice cream for dessert.

Capping the Trip

The final day of the trip included tours of two properties, The Belgrove Resort & Spa and The Breakers Palm Beach. Our first stop was the newly built Belgrove, which opened in West Palm Beach in December 2024 with 21,000 square feet of flexible event space, including the opulent 4,500-square-foot Belgrove Ballroom, charming 1,755-square-foot Latitude Ballroom, and smaller spaces for board meetings or corporate groups. After our tour, we headed to Society 48, one of the hotel’s restaurants, where there were a variety of brunch dishes on offer alongside fresh Florida fruit, yogurt parfaits, and decadent baked goods

>We ended our chockablock hotel tour with The Breakers, a historic resort that was originally built by Palm Beach legend Henry Flagler, one of the original oil barons who made the area popular among northeasterners in the 1920s and 1930s. We took a quick look at the resort’s event spaces, which include the 15,000-square-foot Ponce de Leon Ballroom, 9,600-square-foot Venetian Ballroom, 6,100-square-foot Mediterranean Ballroom, and 5,525-square-foot Circle Ballroom, as well as the historic Gold Room and Magnolia Room and several board rooms.

It was fitting that our fam trip showcasing the wide variety of meeting venues available in The Palm Beaches for groups of all sizes would end at The Breakers. After three days of discovering this part of Florida’s sparkling southeast coast, we understood why Flagler wanted to share this gem with the rest of the world.

Kate Mulcrone is Convene’s digital managing editor.

Learn more about planning a meeting in The Palm Beaches.