This is How We Do It
Coming from so many years where I would just show up to the conference, find my booth, set up, eat all the bagels and drink all the coffee, and get a discounted room rate and a couple of free drinks, I never once thought how much work goes into this incredible venture.
The planning of the conference doesn’t just start a year in advance; it starts 6-7 years in advance and takes many hours of negotiation, planning, and teamwork to execute. At the midyear meeting I saw firsthand how the process starts. It starts with a list. We gather locations suggested by members and universities that lobby for our conference (Dresden and Singapore are past examples of successful school lobbying), and then send out a request for proposals to hotel chains to host our conference in 2017, 2018, and 2019. From this list we collate all the real possibilities based on how many conference and hotel rooms the property has. We need approximately 20-23 conference rooms and approximately 1,000 hotel rooms. This rules out a lot of hotels: some too big, some too small. We then take into account the total cost of attending the conference and what makes a city desirable:
This rules out or puts the proposed property on the list. We could get a great hotel rate in Salt Lake City, but the airfare for some may be extremely expensive, food could be inexpensive, transportation could be high. Conversely, the hotel rate in London may be high, but being a major hub, could drive down the cost of airfare, food is expensive, but there is easy public transportation. The scenarios are gone over to make sure the total cost is within acceptable ranges. Desirability is a huge factor. London, although expensive, is a desirable destination for many – and this assumption has proven true with our registration rates.
The list at the beginning of the meeting started out like this (looking for two North American cities and one European):
Based on the hotel rates, and conference room cost, desirability, and food/transport costs, the list was trimmed to this:
As a rule of thumb, the way we get reduced or free conference rooms is by filling all the hotel rooms we contracted for during the conference. Based on our history of attendees, we estimate how many rooms we’ll need in the hotel. We underrepresent this number to hedge the possibility of paying a penalty fee if we do not meet the number of contracted rooms. This penalty can be anywhere from $100,000-$200,000. In Europe and Asia, that isn’t always the case. We could fill all the rooms, but they still might charge us $175,000 -$300,000 for the conference rooms. And we could be trapped.
Same goes for places where we use conference center facilities. In this case we must have a sponsor to help defray the costs (like in Singapore, where we were subsidized by NTU). If we can’t, then it’s beyond our budget, so we have to look for other options or be smart about other costs. This rules out a lot of European destinations, but we won’t rule it out completely if we can negotiate in our favor or find a sponsor.
Based on this list and a discussion with the Board, we added a few more cities to explore. If we add a full day to the last day of the conference, less conference rooms are needed and more hotels will fit this category. The downside is if we commit to a hotel that fits the less conference room mold, we are wedded to that structure. So the board added the following cities to be explored:
We’ll get more proposals and the Board will then vote based on recommendations. Whatever the Board votes on, we then negotiate with those properties to curb costs and hopefully have a contract signed 4-5 years before the actual conference. Sometimes we’ll get a better deal if we contract within the same hotel chain over 3 years. Maybe we only do Starwood properties for 3 years and they give us free in-room WiFi. Technology is a huge cost, in the range of $100,000, so properties that negotiate better pricing have a better chance. Once we get a better idea of the total costs, we choose which year the conference will be at that location. Then the planning begins!
We are open to pretty much any destination if we can find a proper venue. So if you have ideas, send them our way. Another good way to get on the radar is to plan a regional conference. These are used as test runs to see if the annual conference can be held in that particular city.
It’s not easy: the negotiations are hard, and the opinions of the board differ, but we always manage to make the best decisions for the best properties. And it’s all worth it, to see everyone again in one place talking Comm and eating bagels.