PACE Answers Questions Asked on 2007 Evaluations (Part 1)

Most Associations are only going to share the most flattering of comments on their website about their convention. However, both SSPC and PDCA pride themselves on addressing their members concerns in an open dialog.

We’d like to share some of those comments in the hope that you’ll understand the challenges, obstacles, concessions and issues we deal with to bring you a meeting that addresses your educational requirements/needs, provides opportunities to network with your peers, showcases solutions to your daily work needs and above all costs a fair market price.

We’ll certainly share all the glowing comments we received too!

Q. Why did we go to Dallas?

When SSPC and PDCA decided to co-locate their meetings, in an effort to mitigate any financial liabilities from contracts that were already in place for hotels and convention centers, we honored all existing contracts. We took everything that was in place and either renegotiated the dates/year or in the case of Dallas, renegotiated the original contract with the Adam’s Mark chain and brought it to another city. The original contract was for Jacksonville and since we were in Florida in 2006, staying in Florida the following year was not feasible. The hotel chain required that we must hold the meeting within a year of the original dates to avoid financial penalties.

Q. How are room rates negotiated? Sometimes if we call the hotel and don’t mention the meeting name, we get a better rate.

Ideally, a convention the size of PACE should have a schedule planned out 5 years in advance. It typically takes 6-8 mos. to negotiate the hotel and convention center contracts depending on how many hotels are in your block. So we try to allow at least a year to get everything in place before you actually announce the dates. Therefore you’re looking at confirming rates 4-5 years prior to your meeting.

Many hotels would rather just give you the current year’s convention rate and add 3-5% each year to determine your room rate depending on the economy. We don’t like doing that because it’s too speculative and it really adds up. We’d rather confirm the rate as early as possible so we’re not surprised.

When we negotiate rates, we bring a lot of information to the table – what our meeting is really worth to that hotel – by giving them history of our group on room pick-up, food and beverage charges from previous years and of course, what they deem as projected revenue from other outlets in the hotel.

They look at how long in advance they are taking all those rooms out of inventory in the hopes that we are going to sell them, how much meeting space we are going to use and with all that, the negotiations begin.

Unfortunately the internet has hurt the association convention business to the extent that we can no longer say that we have the best room rates. Hotels don’t want to have any open inventory so they sell it to discount houses that then offer them through sites such as Orbitz and Hotels.com. Also, as you get closer to the actual dates, if the hotel has open rooms, they start to reduce their own rates in order to sell out.

When you book outside the convention block, you hurt the association and there is always a chance that an attrition fee will have to be paid if we don’t meet that block.

Nonetheless, negotiations are done in good faith with our main objective of trying to obtain the most cost effective rates for our attendees – no additional fees are added to our room rates as a result of using third parties and having to pay commissions.

Q. Why can’t we use hotels that are directly across from the convention center so we can walk?
In an ideal situation, we would get the best hotel rates at the closest hotel to the convention center. Unfortunately those hotels that are closest to a center are typically more expensive and less willing to negotiate. They may also not have availability.

Additionally, it sometimes takes years for hotels to be built nearby the convention center. Take New York for example – there are no hotels within walking distance of the Jacob Javits Center. Or, McCormick Place in Chicago – it’s so large that even the closest hotels are not necessarily within walking distance.

So, do we only consider cities that have nearby hotels which are typically smaller cities like Cleveland, Charlotte, Louisville and then people aren’t necessarily interested in going to those cities?

We’d like to be able to consider all cities that offer us the entire package – nice hotels, state of the art convention centers, easy accessibility and options for evening dining and socializing.


Watch for more comments from PACE 2007 Evaluations. If you have a question you'd like answered, please send it to delorenzo@pace2008.com. We promise to answer all of them.

PACE 2008 Goes Hollywood

PACE 2008 will take place January 27-30 in Los Angeles, California. e've adjusted the dates at the request of California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's right,the Governor requested it.

Seems that our original dates conflicted with the Governors Ball preparations following one of the award shows scheduled for 2008. Since they use the Los Angeles Convention Center for many of the festivities, they asked if we could change it by a few weeks.

Only in Hollywood!

Welcome to the PACE 2008 Blog

Stay tuned for more information about next year's great show!