The Florida Music Education Association runs its Professional Learning Conference at the Tampa Convention Center, 333 S Franklin St, from 13 to 16 January 2027. An exhibiting company buys a booth, staffs it for three show days and books rooms for the same week.
FMEA reports more than 10,000 attendees across music educators, music education majors, professors, supervisors, school administrators, K-12 students, parents and chaperones.
What the booth costs
FMEA publishes three prices and one open category. A single 10x10 space runs $750, a corner space $790, and an endcap $1,845. Larger island booths sell on request through the same order.
Placement follows the deposit. An exhibitor that wants last year's space registers, pays the deposit and signs the electronic contract before 1 March. After that date FMEA assigns same-space requests first, then moves and expansions in the order deposits arrived, then opens the remaining floor for general sale. Booths go unassigned without a signed contract.
The floor the crew works
Load-in runs Wednesday 13 January 8am to 6pm and Thursday 14 January 8am to 12pm.
The hall opens Thursday at 12:15pm and runs to 6pm, with College Night from 5pm to 7pm. Friday runs 10am to 6pm. Saturday runs 9am to 1pm. FMEA flags a possible 5pm close on Thursday and Friday.
FMEA prints more than 300 events and 24 All-State Ensembles. Tampa's city calendar lists approximately 250 clinic sessions and concerts and 22 ensembles.
A crew of four and three nights
Wednesday arrival covers the 8am Thursday load-in without a split shift. Saturday 16 January closes at 1pm, so the crew checks out that morning and travels home that afternoon.
Three nights from Wednesday 13 January, four rooms a night, is 12 room-nights.
The block publishes its own rates
FMEA opened its 2027 hotel block on 26 September 2026. It publishes 13 properties with single, double, triple and quad rates. The range runs $173 to $257 a night.
FMEA names four for exhibitors. Westin Tampa Waterside, 725 South Harbor Island Blvd, is $257. Marriott Tampa Water Street, 505 Water St, is $234. Embassy Suites Downtown Convention Center, 513 South Florida Ave, is $254 single and double, $304 triple and $319 quad. Hilton Tampa Downtown, 211 North Tampa St, is $255.
OpenStreetMap foot routing measures those four from 333 S Franklin St at 0.36 miles and 8 minutes, 0.32 miles and 7 minutes, 0.16 miles and 3 minutes, and 0.40 miles and 9 minutes.
FMEA states that not all block hotels sit within walking distance and that it provides no transportation. The cheapest room in the block, Barrymore Hotel Tampa Riverwalk at 111 W Fortune St and $173, measures 1.08 miles and 23 minutes on foot.
The arithmetic on a stand
Booth plus rooms at Embassy Suites comes to $3,798. That is $750 for the 10x10 and 12 room-nights at $254, before tax, freight and meals.
The same 12 room-nights at the Barrymore's $173 bring the total to $2,826. The $84 nightly gap is $1,008 across the stay, against a 23-minute walk each way twice a day.
Cancellation and the return-to-block rule
FMEA charges no fee on rooms cancelled by the listed deadline. A room cancelled after that deadline costs one night, non-refundable.
Cancelled rooms return to the FMEA blocks through the December deadline. The hotel page's help text says rooms return until 12 December, and its deadline table sets the block close at 14 December. A crew that misses a rate re-checks the block in early December.
The badge count is unpublished
FMEA publishes no badge allowance per booth on its exhibitor page. The 2026 conference recorded 144 exhibit day passes against a 17,305 turnstile count. Ask the exhibits desk for the badge count on a 10x10 before the crew is sized.
Scams aimed at exhibitors
FMEA states that no third-party housing or attendee list service exists for the conference, and that nobody from FMEA calls an exhibitor to sell a room. Legitimate mail comes from fmea.org, flmusiced.org, cfae.org or cfaefl.org. The decorator AGS Expo Services writes from ags-expo.com and the contract invitation comes from eSignatures.com. Report an impersonation attempt to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov, and route a corporate travel desk to FMEA's own hotel list before any booking is made.
Services on the stand
Electricity is ordered from Edlen Electric, and an exhibitor may not run its own extension cord to a booth. Internet runs on the free TCC Complimentary network, or on a 3 Mbps Exhibitor WiFi connection at $79.95 a day. Lead retrieval licences from SmartSource start at $305, with multiple-licence discounts on code FMEA0127.
The Tampa Convention Center garage at 141 E Brorein Street publishes a non-event rate of $3 an hour with an $18 daily maximum, and an event rate of $5 to $50 a day.
Booking the rooms
Four rooms a night sits inside a block that already carries a published rate, so use the FMEA rate first. bookMyTeam publishes its own figures: 50 or more hotels approached per destination, 15 to 40 percent off rack rates, no fee, and 103,857 hotels across 46 states. Take a property the block does not carry, or more rooms than the block holds, to the group request form.
