Planning an event at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis? Atlanta Music Pros can help coordinate audio, video, lighting, entertainment and production requirements, subject to the venue’s policies and vendor requirements. For events at the Marriott Marquis we can provide or coordinate ballroom and meeting room audio, wireless microphones, general session production, IMAG and multi-camera video, projection and LED, breakout room AV, live streaming, stage lighting, staging and corporate entertainment — subject to the hotel’s in-house AV arrangements and outside-vendor policy.
The Marquis is the Peachtree Center hotel with the atrium everyone photographs — a vast vertical space designed by John Portman that rises the full height of the building. It is genuinely spectacular, and from an audio standpoint it is one of the most challenging spaces in Downtown Atlanta.
Beyond the atrium, the hotel carries a large ballroom and meeting room inventory built for multi-track conference business. Most production work here is conventional conference production done well, with one distinctive problem attached to any event held in or beside the atrium.
The hotel’s ballrooms and meeting rooms behave predictably. The atrium does not, and any event held in it needs an audio approach designed specifically for that space.
Speech first.
Seeing the stage and keeping the content.
Content people can read.
Making the stage look intentional.
Someone owning the show.
The half most AV companies do not provide.
The Marquis runs a large volume of association and corporate conference business, and most of our work here sits inside those programs.
Ballroom production with PA, presentation management, IMAG and show calling. See general session production.
A deep meeting room inventory run as one coordinated production. See breakout room AV.
Receptions in or beside the atrium, where distributed low-level audio is the only approach that produces intelligible speech.
Ballroom galas with award playback, IMAG, lighting and an after-party. See awards gala production.
Training rooms, board meetings and leadership sessions. See corporate meeting AV.
Sessions built for remote attendees alongside the room. See hybrid event production.
The atrium deserves its own explanation, because it is the one thing about this hotel that surprises people.
A space that rises the full height of a building is an enormous volume of air enclosed in hard surfaces, with no ceiling to speak of near the audience. Sound put into it reverberates for a long time, and reverberation is what destroys speech intelligibility. Adding volume makes it worse, because you are energizing the reverberant field along with the direct sound.
Distributed coverage at low level. Multiple small speakers placed close to where people are standing, each running quietly, delivers intelligible speech where one loud system produces an impressive wash of noise. It is more speakers doing less work, which is counterintuitive but reliable. For anything beyond short remarks, a ballroom is the better room and the atrium is the better cocktail hour.
Conventional convention hotel ballrooms: overhead house lighting that shadows presenters’ faces and therefore wants front key light, room depth that often justifies IMAG, and standard requirements around power, rigging and internet ordering. Most of the production attention goes to the program rather than the building.
Load-in for a Downtown hotel of this size runs through docks and freight elevators on a schedule, and that schedule sets the labor hours. Confirm access windows, elevator availability and overnight rules early. Venue policies, outside-vendor requirements, power, internet, loading access and production restrictions should be confirmed with the venue during pre-production. Many hotels, arenas and convention facilities maintain in-house AV departments, exclusive service providers, union labor rules, rigging approvals and outside-vendor fees, and those terms decide what any outside company can do in the room.
An illustrative configuration for a conference opening with a reception in the atrium followed by a ballroom general session the next morning. This is a hypothetical illustration of how a production of this shape fits together. It is not a past project, not a quote and not a price.
Keep speeches in the ballroom and drinks in the atrium. A long program in a full-height atrium is the most common avoidable mistake at this hotel.
This page exists because planners search for AV help by venue. It does not indicate any affiliation, endorsement, partnership, preferred-vendor status or approved-vendor status, and we make no claim to any. the Atlanta Marriott Marquis is named here only to describe the kind of production planning an event in that building involves.
Whether an outside production company can work in a given space, and on what terms, is decided by the venue and by your own contract with it. We will work within those terms, and we will tell you plainly when something you have asked for is not ours to promise.
Atlanta Music Pros is an Atlanta-based company covering Metro Atlanta and North Georgia. We travel to the venue rather than operating suburban offices.
We can provide or coordinate ballroom and meeting room audio, microphones, general session production, IMAG, projection or LED, breakout AV, streaming, lighting, staging and entertainment, subject to the hotel’s in-house AV arrangements and outside-vendor policy. Confirm that policy and any associated fee in writing before comparing quotes, as it can change which option is genuinely cheaper.
You can hold a reception there very successfully, and short remarks are achievable with the right approach. A long program is a bad idea. A space rising the full height of a building is an enormous volume enclosed in hard surfaces, and the resulting reverberation is what destroys speech intelligibility. Our recommendation is drinks in the atrium and speeches in a ballroom.
Because volume energizes the reverberant field along with the direct sound, so the reflections get louder at the same rate the speech does and intelligibility does not improve. The working approach is the opposite: multiple small speakers placed close to where people are standing, each running quietly. More speakers doing less work is counterintuitive and reliable.
They benefit from it considerably. Convention hotel ballroom house lighting comes straight down from the ceiling, which shadows presenters’ eyes and makes faces read poorly — mildly unflattering in the room, clearly amateur once magnified onto a screen or recorded. Front key light on the presenter area is the highest-value, lowest-cost addition to almost any general session here.
Through scheduled dock time and freight elevator access, arranged with the hotel in advance. That schedule is the main driver of labor hours in the quote, so a generous, well-scheduled window genuinely costs less than a compressed one. Confirm access times, elevator availability and whether overnight work is permitted during scoping rather than the week of the event.
Yes. The hotel carries a deep meeting room inventory, and multiple rooms are set simultaneously under one wireless frequency plan so no two rooms interfere. A roaming technician covers session starts with dedicated technicians in the rooms that need them, and changeovers between sessions are choreographed in advance against the agenda rather than improvised.
Tell us which rooms you have and whether anything is happening in the atrium. If it is, we will tell you honestly what that space will and will not support.