One General Session, Four Tracks
ATD Core4 runs at the Indiana Convention Center from September 29 to October 1, 2026. The venue publisher forecasts 1,000 attendees. The programme needs one general-session room and four concurrent breakout rooms across three days.
ATD publishes the structure. Three general sessions anchor the run: the opening keynote at 12:45 p.m. Tuesday, a second keynote at 8:00 a.m. Wednesday and the closing keynote at 11:30 a.m. Thursday. The four focus areas supply the tracks: instructional design, training delivery and facilitation, evaluating impact, and emerging trends.
ATD reports 48-plus learning experiences and 300-plus TD professionals on its own event site. The venue forecasts 1,000 attendees.
The Space-to-Room Ratio on Record
The venue page names the Indiana Convention Center and no room. No hall square footage for the general-session room is published.
The published ratio sits at the district level. Nine properties on Visit Indy's connected-hotel list carry both a sleeping-room count and a meeting-square-footage figure. They hold 4,512 sleeping rooms and 552,957 square feet of meeting space. That is 122.5 square feet of meeting space per guest room.
Kalibri Labs and PwC set the national mark in their 2018 U.S. groups and meetings study. The study reports that 12.1 percent of U.S. hotels carry more than 30 square feet of meeting space per guest room. Its trend analysis uses 2015 to 2017 data. The Indianapolis district figure runs four times that threshold.
The same study splits group demand by building size. Hotels above 15,000 square feet of meeting space held 37.1 percent of group demand in 2017 against 38.2 percent in 2015. Hotels between 8,000 and 15,000 square feet held 23.9 percent against 25.7 percent.
What the Group Draws From the District
Visit Indy publishes 12 connected hotels and 5,200 rooms. The venue publishes 7,100 downtown hotel rooms and 4,700 rooms connected by skywalk. A 1,000-attendee forecast equals 14.1 percent of the downtown total and 22.2 percent of the 4,512 rooms in the nine-property set.
The largest single property in that set is the JW Marriott Indianapolis at 1,005 guest rooms, per Visit Indy. The forecast fills 99.5 percent of that room count on one night.
The Signia by Hilton Indianapolis opens in December 2026 with 803 rooms and 90,000 square feet of meeting space, per the convention center's expansion page. Its Grand Ballroom measures 50,455 square feet. Visit Indy lists the property at 235,000 square feet of meeting space including a 50,000-square-foot ballroom, so confirm the venue's own figure before you price the room.
The Revenue Side of the Bid
The Kalibri and PwC study puts group room revenue at $1.00 for every square foot of available meeting space in 2017. The figure was $0.92 in 2015. Groups supplied 14.4 percent of U.S. room nights in 2017 and 17.9 percent of guest-paid RevPAR.
CBRE Hotels Research reports the current food and beverage line. The analysis draws on 2,669 U.S. full-service, resort and convention hotels from its 2023 and 2024 Trends surveys, plus 866 monthly statements for January through June 2025. Banquet revenue at convention hotels fell 7.3 percent in 2025. Banquet revenue at resort hotels rose 8.7 percent. Public room rental rose 9.5 percent and service charges rose 7.9 percent.
CBRE reads the two banquet figures as a group preference for resort properties in the offseason. It also reports a fall in attendance from government and federal employees at association meetings. Both items sit on the planner's concession list.
Registration and the Bid Window
Registration is tiered by date. Standard pricing is open at $1,525 for ATD members and $1,725 for nonmembers. Team rates for three or more run $1,450 and $1,650. Government rates run $1,475 and $1,675.
The venue's booking calendar lists 12 events from September 22 to October 15. Three open on September 29: Core4, the MAPP Benchmarking and Best Practices Conference and ATD OrgDev. The Do it Best Corp. Fall Market holds the building September 25 to September 28.
What the Property Weighs
Four concurrent breakout rooms plus one general-session room put five rooms in play in each block. The 122.5-square-foot district ratio covers that requirement across the nine properties that publish both figures.
Property bids turn on the five rooms in play and on the three arrival days that share September 29. Ask the hotel which of the three groups it will hold rooms for on the Tuesday night.