90p Admin

All, I have been doing some research and thinking about MOTM 2016. At the end of the meeting this year we will thinking that we would likely have modest growth for MOTM 2016 to between 120 to 140. So with this in mind I think we can stay at the Embassy suite for at least one more year. I contacted Embassy to inquire and get another proposal which I got it back today. As you would of guessed the room prices went up a little from $169 to $182 which is not surprising with the remodel. But the rest of the costs stayed about the same. My main concern is that we would have a hard limit of 140 and that we are limited to the same rooms we had this year. Although, since we know in advance, we can plan accordingly and make it work. I definitely don't think we are going to get a more competitive rate (with free breakfast, happy hour and location ). Not to mention everyone really liked the Embassy. I did find out that we aren't the only group that is looking for a that weekend. Luckily with our history with them we have the first option on the weekend but we are definitely on the clock. Does anyone have concerns with me locking down the hotel for next year? Any other thoughts? Jim

Btw, I bumped up the guaranteed numbers to 85 on our main nights. This might be too aggressive but that is up 15 from this year. If we want we can reduce them to 75. We are allow %15 percent before we pay for room empty rooms So we have a buffer of 57 rooms total for the week

February 19-21, 2016 - let's first conflict check this to any conferences we know about

How hard can you push them about the room rate? Seems they are playing on our desire to stay in that location by jacking the rate plus telling you there is a little competition for the space. The remodel was a PITA for us PLUS my room certainly wasn't a remodel. Bathroom and dcor was still circa 1990.

Interesting calendar showing San Diego Convention Center events w/attendance - http://visitsandiego.com/events/18-month

For a conflict prospective. I am not sure what other one we need to worry about other then sage Acumatica and ITA. Which is all cases no conflict that I can fine. Regarding local conventions. As you saw the is something going on at the convention center that week so that is part of the reason that we are paying a higher rate. In looking at the Other downtown hotels, the rate seemed good. I think we really got lucky this year that our rate didn't go up but obviously this year there is a small bump. If you roll in the breakfast cost it makes the rate better too. Jeff the hotel did go thru a remodel...."" We lived it "" maybe not the room but the hotel did and it allows them to chafge a higher rate. The big question for me is not so much the rate but the number of rooms we guarantee. We have a buffer of about 50 room nights to work with. To few and we get a lot of complaints. That there aren't enough room Too many and we are scrambling to fill rooms.

Most of these vendors travel all the time and have their eye on the calendar - it's probably worthwhile for us to send a brief email asking if they have any or know of any conflicts in the month of February 2016.

Can you make that happen? I think it would be appropriate coming from you Wayne.

I'm going to work on that - I don't want to mention a date because some of our members don't read closely and if I say that we are THINKING about xx/yy/zz they'll hear ""we are hosting it on xx/yy/zz"". If I can figure it out -- I'm going to try to have it out of a group mailbox so that we can all see the replies and if needed have individual replies without a reply-all.

I'm just going to send out an email - much less confusing. Here's what I've drafted: Our events team is hard at work planning Meeting Of The Minds 2016. We again are planning to hold the conference Friday - Saturday - during the month of February in San Diego. As a vendor member and participant in our 2015 event we're interested in hearing from you if you know of any event(s) that would conflict with our conference during the month of February 2016. Please reply back if you know of any competing conferences or events which we should schedule around in the month of February 2016. Thanks very much.

Aatrix: None that I know of. February is difficult for us as we are still in the midst of W2 season.

Sound like we are good on the dates.

I did not get any responses that there were conflicts on the dates you outlined