June Conference update

In order to address concerns about the June conference hotel rooms, I would like to give the following information:

1. Yes, the room block sold out in under 3 hours. That is accurate.

2. We have a contract with the Omni for 1270 room nights over the course of the week, with more room nights contracted for Tuesday and Wednesday nights to accommodate the commission meetings the next morning. Last week we also added an addendum to the contract for a new total of 1544 room nights for conference week.

3. Every additional room night added to the contract runs the risk of us falling into attrition when those room nights are cancelled closer to the conference. The PAC membership is who suffers when rooms are cancelled at the last minute. The money from those rooms comes out of the budget. Last year we experienced significant attrition fees. For those that don’t know, attrition is a clause within a group booking contract that specifies the minimum number of rooms a group must book and pay for, even if they don’t end up using all of them, essentially acting as a safeguard for the hotel to protect against lost revenue when a group doesn’t fill their entire reserved room block; if the group falls short of this minimum, they may be charged a penalty fee for the unused rooms.

4. The board cannot control how many reservations a single person or agency makes. Nor would we ask them to. It is not in our purview to place a limit on those things.

5. We will continue to ask for patience with these matters.

Thank you.