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jenettMy credentials for this
Are at the bottom of this post, but involve being hotel chair or assisting in it for four smaller entirely volunteer-run conventions over the past 4 years. Two in the SF world, two in the Pagan community, two of which I’m in the midst of as I write this post. (One - Paganicon 2012 - is about to happen, one - Farthing Party - where I’m working on initial details this week, so both parts of the process are fresh in my mind.)
A lot of the basic theory is the same for larger conventions, you just have somewhat more leverage in some directions, and a lot more complexity.
What you as an event attendee can do to help:
Before I get into the “How this works”, I figure I should start with some simple stuff that anyone who is attending a hotel-based event can do that makes the hotel chair’s life easier.
Buy your membership early if you can
This helps *so* much with planning numbers, it’s not even funny. Also with having budget for deposits and other fun things. Even if you can’t do the whole thing, a lot of conventions do a supporting membership - usually pay a little now, pay the rest later.
Don’t break the hotel or the hotel staff
This seems simple, but all too often goes wrong. Do your best to leave a space as tidy or tidier than you found it. If you can’t, let the hotel (and the event runners) know as soon as possible. It makes life easier for everyone. And whenever possible, bring a problem to the convention committee before bringing it to the hotel. (If your hotel room is flooding, call the hotel desk. If you have a problem with a function room space, try to find convention staff before you go at the hotel.)
If you can ask at a time people are not swamped, it is also better for everyone, if your question is not time-sensitive. Your hotel chair is likely swamped from about 3 weeks before the event until about 24 hours after it starts. (After that, it improves.)
Your hotel will be swamped when lots of people are trying to check in (so about 4pm to 8pm the first night, for a weekend con), plus whatever else they have going on.
Consult early and often
If you are part of planning the event in some way (including proposing a panel or workshop), and if you have an idea that involves food, drink, water (other than drinking water), potential mess, animals (other than service animals), noise, putting signs up, tape in general, public spaces of the hotel, moving furniture, candles, ritual blades, or ritual food/drink: make sure you include the hotel chair in your discussions.
All of the above may be affected by contract or hotel requirements. (I think I’ve hit all the major points, but if not, I’m sure someone will tell me and I’ll edit.)
Understand that hotel contracts are complicated
For most events - at least of the fan or volunteer-run sort - the specifics are series of best-guess compromises. (Much more on that below.) Alas, budgets are not infinite, and unlike some professional conferences (the ones where people pretty much have to go, for example), it can be very hard to guess attendance numbers which makes some pieces of the planning very very stressful and complicated.
Also, there are some things that might technically be possible, but that the hotel chair feels might be one thing too many to ask the hotel. Trust their judgement, or find a different hotel chair next time, but second-guessing them or pushing once they’ve said “No, I really don’t want to go there, and here’s why” does no one any good.
What costs money may be different than you think
Hotel are businesses, and they need to make money to keep being hotels. But exactly *what* costs money may be different than you’d assume. Food functions are absurdly expensive compared to what you could probably arrange yourself - but there’s reasons for this. (See corkage explanation below.) Same thing for dealing with AV equipment.
In contrast, room rates (especially if you can promise a reasonable number of rooms) or even function space (in an off season time) can be amazingly affordable.
Your hotel chair - if they’re any good - is balancing all of those things against “Hey, there’s this really cool thing we’d like to do.” and “Oh, here’s our budget.” This is not simple, but can be really rewarding.
Spread an understanding of corkage far and wide.
Short version: if it involves food or drink, and it is taking place in a hotel function space (not a private room or the hotel’s own restaurant, etc), your hotel chair should be in the loop, because you are risking hitting contract issues bigtime.
Briefly, corkage is the fee that hotels charge to allow you to bring in outside food or drink in public hotel spaces (generally, rooms or suites, even for things like a con-run hospitality suite are easily waived from these fees, but getting a function space waived is a lot harder. It’s usually also easier to make the argument if you’re serving something that would not be on the hotel menu anyway - snacks and light nibbles are a different thing than actual sit-down meals or formal reception food.)
These fees can be for bottles of alcohol (which is where the term comes from) or can be for the food. Neither is cheap. Both can be really frustrating to deal with. And in general, it’s not worth doing until the con is a fairly substantial size (you need something bigger than a suite to hold hospitality) or you have other specific requirements. Either way, expect a noticeable jump in your expenses.
They place these fees high in order to encourage you to buy their food instead of bringing in your own from outside. When you break it down per person and realise the labour costs, the food rates are not *entirely* unreasonable - but they do add up really fast.
(To give some Twin Cities numbers: A cheese and fruit reception thing or bite-size dessert buffet runs $4-5 a person. A moderate to reasonably lavish brunch runs $20-25 per person. Not including taxes or gratuity, which run about 30% combined. To give you a comparison, a meal in their restaurant runs in the $10-20 range including tax and tip.)
Hotels flex in different places, for different reasons
A hotel will make more compromises in its contracts when it’s not sure it’s going to get other options. (This is good business). So, an event in a major tourist destination in high season will naturally be more expensive than one somewhere less appealing at an off-season. (Say, Minnesota in March, which also manages to miss wedding season.)
But there’s also some other interesting bits here, that are very location dependent - I go into them below.
Anyway, don’t assume that what worked for this convention over there is going to be the same thing for that convention over here. Different cities, different times of year, even different parts of a metro area may have vastly different profiles and costs. (Notably, in wedding season, if you want to take over the spaces that usually hold weddings, you have to pay them enough money to make that worth it to them. Weddings are big money.)
If you want to be extra nice to your hotel chair
Make sure she or he can easily find a place to sit down, especially for the first 24 hours of the convention. (There is a *lot* of running back and forth involved). Check and see if they’ve eaten.
After the first 12 hours or so, dragging them off somewhere to eat where people cannot immediately grab them with non-urgent questions is a prize beyond virtue. (Don’t go too far - we’re talking back corner of the hotel restaurant or a very nearby place here, not across town. But out of line of sight is really good.) Making it easy for them to get their quick energy food or quick caffeine-like substance of choice can also be very handy.
(If you are contemplating this for me, at conventions I run on chocolate, diet Coke, and a need to eat lunch on the early side. Having company for breakfast is also awesome, because I tend to be up early. Good Indian, Chinese, or other Asian food options delight me.)
Ok. So if you are still interested in the topic, I shall move onto the basics of what I know about hotel chair work.
Hotel chair duties and necessary skills
Generally, the duties involve:
- Choosing a hotel (in collaboration with other board members)
- Negotiating the contract
- Coordinating plans for the use of space, and working through them with the hotel.
- Coordinating AV and food needs
- Generally being around to make things go smoothly once the event starts (chance are you will have one or two people who have hotel room issues, stuff will go wonky somewhere, etc.)
The necessary skills are:
- Ability to go look at the hotel or delegate someone who will look at the right things to do it.
- Ability to deal with contract pieces (Someone who does business-type conversations comfortably is a good move here. You don’t need to be super savvy about every detail, but you need to know how to to ask the right questions, and to present concerns and needs in a way the hotel can make sense out of. It does take social skills.)
- Good to excellent organizational ability. You will be coordinating emails between your convention staff, the person dealing with room details at the hotel, the person dealing with function space set-up and food needs at the hotel, any AV or other rental needs, and possibly other people. (I currently have two draft emails open in my Gmail, because I’m waiting for other people to get back to me.)
- Related to the above, a willingness to nag people if they don’t get back to you in a reasonable span of time, in a way that will not annoy them too much. It is not a good task for someone who hates to say “That thing I asked you last week? Where are we with that?”
- Reliable access to whatever communication tools you’re using. (The couple of weeks before the convention, I am in my email dealing with stuff *all the time*.) Good written communication skills are pretty necessary.
On the other hand, I have a harder time with phone calls - I share an office, and going elsewhere is a) complicated and b) means I don’t have my computer (and thus, previous emails with questions) handy. Fortunately, right now, I’m an hour ahead of the hotel, and get off work at 4pm my time anyway, so I just arrange to call them when I get home.
I’ve found you can do most things via email, but there are times phone is *way* faster. Or IM. Clarify with the relevant parties how you prefer to do things, and when it’s okay to call or IM you.
Talking about what you’re doing
Part of the process of talking to hotels is talking about what you’re doing, and what the event is like. Some hotels have seen SF cons for decades. Others will blink at you. We had an experience with one hotel we looked at for Paganicon last year who Very Clearly Didn’t Want Us (and then quoted a truly exorbitant rate - I am not kidding when I say it was 4 times what our base commitment to the hotel we chose was, for less stuff.)
You do not want to surprise your hotel, so be up front and open, but in a way that connects to what they’re used to dealing with. For Paganicon, I found that something like “Are you familiar with science fiction conventions (and named two they’d hosted)? We’re like that. We’re planning on 3-4 tracks of programming sessions, a dealer room, a hospitality suite, and some music events - acoustic or lightly amplified, focus on various topics of interest to the modern Pagan and nature-based religious community.” worked pretty well.
[Yes, I know, this is a very general description of the Pagan community. For the hotel’s purposes, it worked just fine. They do not care about cosmological details.]
You should know that hotels see a lot more business conventions than fannish or other community ones, and there are some lingo differences. What we normally call the Vendor or Dealer room, they tend to call Exhibits. There are different names for “hospitality suites” floating around, but that tends to work better than “con suite” Life is easier if your hotel chair is comfortable code switching for different settings.
Picking your hotel:
The first step in all of this is choosing a hotel, and different events will have different priorities. Very few hotels will be perfect (match everything you want in a single location) so you will probably have to make some compromises.
My preferred method for this is to do some initial research online (based on general location, then looking at the hotel website and checking function space maps + sizes, a vague idea of room rates and options, etc.) and then go look at them. (Or have someone go look at them.)
Big considerations include:
- Cost (both for function space and per room night)
- Layout and location of function space
- Nearby food options
- Ease of access (parking, public transit) and general location
- How willing the hotel is to work with your kind of event.
Location
Some cons are peripatetic, so you start with “Which city are we doing this thing in?” And sometimes, the available hotels in an area have other issues, so you end up looking in new locations or compromising on something else. This is probably the first thing you need to sort out.
Some cons care a great deal about people being able to get to a range of interesting local restaurants, or be easily accessible from the airport. Others care more about other things.
It’s worth noting that being in the middle of a city ups your costs in several ways. Both the obvious one (property costs tend to be higher), but also that parking will likely cost more, and there may be city-wide taxes. (In the Twin Cities metro area, this is a 4-5% difference on hotel rooms, function space, etc. between being in Minneapolis or St. Paul or Bloomington, and being in, say, St. Louis Park.)
Basic space
Hotels have lots of different space configurations. There is a hotel in Minneapolis I (and many other people) would *love* to use for conventions (it’s on top of a community midtown market with awesome food options, great transit access, and across the street from one of the city SF and mystery bookstores). Alas, they have no function space that will hold more than about 80 people (and not that many function rooms), which is just too small for most events of our kind.
Some hotels have space, but it is weirdly laid out, or you have to wander from point A to B in confusing ways. Sometimes this is worth it for other reasons, but it’s suboptimal, will annoy a noticeable portion of your attendees, complicates things like dealer room placement, and has accessibility considerations. It also increases wear and tear on your con committee and key volunteers, who will be running madly around the space.
(Last year at Paganicon we did this, because the cost savings were substantial, and as a first year event, we weren’t sure about attendance. This year, we’re in their upstairs space, and I am *so* looking forward to everything being across the hall from everything else.)
You may also want to have an eye out for electrical outlets, wifi access, air circulation/ventilation, and whether the chlorine from the pool is present in the function spaces.
Room rates and types
Hotels like to rent out their sleeping rooms. (Logical, right?) When they book an event, they will usually offer a room rate that is better than what’s on their website, to encourage people to stay there. (Our room rate for Paganicon this year was $20 less than their usual rate advertised right now, just to give you an idea.)
However, this comes with a complication: they would like you to *commit* to a certain number of rooms in your contract. (More on that below.) This requires your hotel chair to estimate, make guesses, and then finally throw up their hands and pray.
For volunteer-run convention models (rather than, say, business or professional conventions) you want a hotel with a reasonable number of double/doubles (two double beds, one room) because people will want to share, some king beds, and some suites. Paganicon is currently running at a ratio of about 4 double rooms to 2 kings to 1 suite. Lots of people may want to share rooms.
Food options
Once you have people at your convention, they would like to eat. Some people manage with the hotel restaurants (which vary vastly in quality, have varying approaches to dealing with dietary limitations, can be very slow, are often not as cheap as other options, and can get boring, anyway.)
So, lots of conventions like finding places where there are a wider range of food options. (One of the reasons we like the Paganicon hotel is that there are about 7 decent options, including very inexpensive ones, within a block radius, and the hotel restaurant is one of the better of its kind. This is a lot better than some of the airport hotels, where you really need a car to go anywhere other than the hotel option.)
Function space
You want to consider what you’re doing in your function space. If you have a keynote or big event (a dance, a big concert, whatever), you will want a space big enough to hold most of your attendees at one time. (Some fraction will not be at any given event. How big that fraction is, varies, but 85%-90% present is a reasonable number to start with, I think.)
How do you know how big your convention will be? Good question. Welcome to one of the many mysteries of being hotel chair. You can make some guesses from similar conventions, or determine that you want to have an upper membership cap, and you can do some things to encourage early registration (like lower rates until a certain date, or supporting memberships).
If you are doing single-track programming, you need space that will hold most of your convention. If you are doing multiple-track programming, you need spaces that can be broken down to a reasonable size for each track. (People swimming in large open spaces is annoying.)
Accessibility
This is this far down the list not because it isn’t important, but because you need to have specific hotels in mind before it makes sense to look here. (Hotel websites are Really Uninformative about general accessibility issues.)
Walk every route someone might walk during the convention (function space to function space, function space to where you get to hotel rooms, function space to hotel doors, function space to restaurants, function space to bathrooms), paying attention to the following:
- Is the space actually accessible? (In the US, ADA means that it should be, but there are some *weird* retrofittings out there.)
- Are there unexpected stairs anywhere attendees might want to go? If so, what’s the way around that? How annoying is it?
- Where are the bathrooms in relationship to the function space, and is that a pain in the neck? Can people (including those using mobility aids or who move slowly) reasonably make it to the bathrooms and back during a programming break?
- Can you have all your function space on one floor, to avoid waits for the elevators?
- How much of a pain is it to, say, go from the function space to the restaurant, for someone in a wheelchair. (This is possible, but sort of a pain, in the current Paganicon hotel, because of where the elevator is.)
- How does the hotel handle fridges for medication (is there a charge? Is it first-come-first-serve?) What about accessible rooms?
- What accessibility needs do you know you have in the community likely to be there?
You also want to look at noise (is there a night club that runs until 4am on weekends? Anyone who is prone to migraines or who is a light sleeper will be cranky about it), if you want scent-free spaces (layout of the function space matters here), and whether the layout of whatever you’re planning to use for hospitality space will work for your plans.
Transportation options
How are people going to get to you? Will they have cars to park? How much of a pain is public transit?
There may be some weird quirks - the Paganicon hotel is not allowed to run free shuttles to the airport because they’re outside a certain radius from the airport. But they do shuttles to the light rail, and there are other transit options.
Other considerations
If you’re running an event that repeats yearly (or whenever) it is worth your time to a) investigate a bunch of options and b) try to pick one that gives you room to grow. If you have a good event, the hotel is a lot more likely to make things easier for you the next time (plus, you’ll already know a lot about how they work, what’s easy, etc.)
For example, we got a surprisingly good deal (substantially more function space in a better layout, for what is probably less actual money than last year, but I don’t have final numbers yet) with this year’s Paganicon contract because a) they knew we were a pretty good crowd who treated the hotel and staff well b) we bought lots of alcohol (they stocked mead and hard cider for us, which helped), c) lots of people ate in the restaurant, and d) we wanted to do this in what is a very slow season for them.
The triad of negotiation:
So, how does this contract negotiation thing work? Basically, all contracts are some combination of the following three things: room nights, food functions, and flat out “pay us X to rent Y space for Z time” charges.
This is the point where you go to the hotel, and say something like "I'd be interested in holding an event for around X-Y people on your hotel, probably around Z room nights, at Q time, with [whatever options: cash bar, food function, whatever.]
They then draft a proposal, and you look it over, and decide from there. Doing this with multiple hotels is useful (three is a nice number), and can sometimes let you do fun bargaining conversations. (Sometimes, you get three proposals, and one of them is the clear winner, or one or more hotels aren't free the weekends you want, or whatever.)
Room nights
The hotel would like to have people stay in its rooms. (This is logical, right? That’s why they’re a hotel.)
So, the contract piece here involves you saying “Well, we think we’ll have X nights of people staying in your rooms” and committing to that. If you guess wrong and don’t have enough numbers, there are penalties, and those are usually based on the percentage of rooms you did fill.
(So filling 80% is a lot better than filling 40%, and in the latter case, you’re looking at making up a substantial chunk of cost to the hotel. Like thousands and thousands, even if it’s a small con, because the penalties are based on what the hotel would have made if those rooms had been rented.)
This is an area to read your contract *very carefully* in, and to negotiate something that balances getting you a good deal on space with not exposing you to too much risk. It is much better to guess low, as long as the hotel will allow you to raise the room cap (not a problem in my experience as long as they’ve got space.)
Food functions
Hotels make money by selling you food, too. Food functions are a handy way to do this, and can range from a cash bar to reception food to a full buffet to a sit-down meal.
The really handy thing about food functions from a hotel chair’s perspective is that they scale your costs. If you’re not certain how many people you’re going to get, it’s a lot easier to build scaling into your food contract than into either your room night or function space commitments. There is usually a minimum, but in the contracts I’ve worked on, it hasn’t been very hard to reach it if you have 75-100 people.
(The other handy bit is that you’re giving people more for their money: instead of X amount for space, you get Y amount (which is often not hugely more than X amount) for space + food. And shared food is a useful community bonding thing in all sorts of ways. Downside is that people have specific food needs and preferences, so it can be tricky to build a food function that suits everyone.)
Last year’s Paganicon, we basically built the budget on the food functions - first year event, not sure how many people we were going to have. What we could do is say “Ok, X amount of each person’s registration basically covers their food, which basically covers our space” (once we hit our minimum.) Then, when we had about twice that number of actual registrations, we could have more flexibility in other areas.
This was because we really weren’t sure how many room nights we were going to end up with, and didn’t want to commit huge amounts to function space costs if we could avoid it. Likewise, we made the choice to take their smaller function space (with some logistical complications) because it was substantially cheaper (we got the space basically for free with our food function agreements because they knew it wouldn’t be in demand for other events, and their upper space might be).
This year’s contract, we built on room nights and function space charges, and made the decision to pay for a much better (and larger) space upstairs. We’re doing a cash bar, but that’s the only food function this time around.
Again, rememember that your food function costs likely do not include taxes and gratuity (and that’s probably around 30%). Budget those in. Now.
Function space charges
This is, as above, the flat “You pay us X, you get the space for Y time” agreement. It’s the most clear cut one, but a) it isn’t very flexible and b) be aware that you need to compete for whatever else they’d put in that space at that time. (Namely, weddings, which are any weekend convention’s big competition most of the time.) It’s also especially hard on conventions where the leadership changes from year to year, or where there isn’t a persistent buffer in the bank account.
Bonus challenges and opportunities
There are a few other things that affect contracts.
Time of year
As mentioned, off-season events for the area tend to be cheaper than high season ones. This can vary hugely and not for the obvious reasons, like, say, the weather. (Though people wanting Minnesota as a destination in the winter is lower than, say, Florida.)
The Paganicon hotel is in a heavily Jewish area of the Twin Cities metro (they maintain a fully kosher kitchen, as well) so it gets a great deal of wedding traffic. However, there are times during the Jewish calendar year when weddings are (much) less common. Navigating this can lead to good contract options, and a lot more flexibility with space.
Be aware that the hotel may have other specific conferences that return year after year, and you may have to navigate around those dates. (Picking a date for your convention is a whole other topic, but the Paganicon dates generally try to avoid two local SF conventions, Easter (when people may have family commitments), and the spring equinox. Everything else we’ll flex for.)
First time events
As noted, you’re doing an extra amount of guesswork with a first time event. In this case, negotiating for as much flexible stuff as you can (basing it on food rather than room nights) is a smart move.
Future events
Especially if you’re booking in a low season, hotels will likely be very willing to give you a good deal in hopes of future events. They’d rather have an event that’s cheaper than they’d do at other times of year than not have anything booked at all.
Special permissions and consideration:
When considering your event, there’s a bunch of special things to consider beyond the above. In no particular order, except the first.
Corkage : I can’t say it often enough. Corkage matters, corkage confuses people, and corkage must be obeyed. Understand the limits, and share them widely with your committee.
Knives: Do not startle the hotel. Whether you’re an SF event with people who like costuming or a Pagan event with ritual tools, if you think people might even vaguely contemplating having costume pieces or ritual pieces, talk early to your hotel about how to handle that.
(A good default for ritual tools is “Only the minimum needed, in the hands of the presenters, and otherwise locked in private hotel rooms”. Bear state law in mind with this - Massachusetts, for example, has notoriously tight knife laws. For costume pieces, blunt and peacebound is a good restriction for the con - it’s easy to knock someone on the head with a costume piece in tight quarters, and it still hurts.)
Candles: Generally, hotels are fine with candles in glass containers, but are happier if you keep them to the minimum needed. Check anyway. Do not surprise the hotel: it will not make anyone happy.
Alcohol: Alcohol in religious ritual use may be fine with the hotel, but ask first. (Sense a theme here?) Be very clear about the token amount.
Alcohol in your hospitality suite is a larger question: it gets expensive, you need to make sure you’re monitoring for legal drinking age, and it can skew the attendance of your event in the directions you may or may not want. Consider carefully. (Also, consider how many of your likely attendees may be in recovery, or not drink, or not be around people who are.) Also, consider corkage. (Generally, as noted, corkage waivers for a suite are relatively simple.)
(We’re doing a cash bar at one evening event this year, and the hospitality suite remains alcohol free. Other groups hosting suites are welcome to provide alcohol as long as they have a clear plan in place to monitor legal age.)
Noise (both external to event and internal): People in groups make noise. Be up front with the hotel about when and how that will happen. (Frankly, most of the fan-run conventions I know make a lot less noise than your average wedding, but convincing hotels of that when you say “live music” can be tricky.)
Anyway. Put the noisy stuff where it won’t affect other guests. Put the not-noisy stuff places it won’t have lots of noise to fight with. Consider whether background noise (from the pool, from the lobby, from other events) will filter into your programming or vendor space, and how much of a problem that will be.
Things affecting other guests (hallway, access, etc.): Talk to the hotel about what they need for other guests in the hotel, ways your room scheduling may affect them, etc. Be aware of where non-convention members may try and wander in. (We had a lot of people wander by the dealer room last year.)
Also, have a clear policy about not interfering with use of the hotel by other guests, what appropriate clothing is, and related things.
Hospitality suites, bed removal, and ice in the bathtub
On a small scale (i.e. hospitality suite in a hotel suite rather than function space), you probably want to remove the beds (this will cost money) and figure out how to keep drinks cold.
Throwing room parties (which includes the subclass ‘run a hospitality suite’) is an art all of its own, in which I am but a .. ok, maybe I’m a journeyman now. The master-class treatise on the subject is over here.
The classic solution for cold drinks is to put ice in the bathtub (generally lining it with plastic to prevent scratches). Hotels are not terribly happy with this, and it’s also sort of a pain in the neck.
When this came up at the Paganicon hotel, they thought about it, and said “You know, we have one of those big fridges for soda you can have for the weekend - we only need it for really big events.” (Glass-sided, big door that opens, shelves spaced for cans and bottles.) We enthusiastically said yes, and it works *wonderfully*. They’re happy, we’re happy, people who do not have to dig through ice to find their beverage of choice are happy.
You can also ask about other fridges - just make sure you put them in places people can get at them, even when there’s a cluster of people standing around talking and not moving for half an hour at a time. (People do that. It’s better to plan for it than get cranky.)
Security considerations
Even small events can have security needs. An event of 100-200 people doesn’t need a major intense security plan, but it’s good to know who’s in charge, who can handle which kinds of issues, and when you bring in the hotel and when you try to defuse yourself. Communicate where to go for help clearly to your membership.
Generally, having a committee member or some way to get one fast in a public location most of the hours of the convention (say 9am to the end of your last programming item) is a really smart idea. (“get one fast” can be a designated person who a) has their phone on vibrate, and b) tells the person on desk where they are.)
Having something where you can say “We don’t expect any problems, but here’s our policies, and you can find someone who can get the committee person on duty here at these times.” makes the hotel happier. We like that. (They should also have a way to contact the hotel chair and anyone else with budgetary discretion on the hotel account - this should be the event chair and maybe the event treasurer, depending on the committee structure.)
Chlorine and pools
Hotel pools are a pleasant thing. The sickly smell of chlorine invading every programming space is not. Ideally, bring someone sensitive to chlorine with you when you do your pre-contract explorations, and have them wander around the likely spaces for a bit. If not, do your best to figure out if this will be an issue. Most pools are more heavily chemically managed in high season than in low.
Remember that pools also produce noise, if they acquire happy children playing games. (Or happy adults letting off steam.) It is tedious to have that filter into your Very Serious Topic discussion.
Other chemical sensitivities
Hotels are limited in what cleaning products they use (they go through a lot, they have to clean fast, and it’s the kind of thing that chains tend to set globally.)
However, you can ask (and should) about whether they can avoid scented cleaning products in programming spaces at particular times, or things like that. (Just find a time they *can* clean - and that’s not going to be 11pm at night, probably.)
Other things to check
There are other things you will want to know early in the process:
- How long does your room rate extend? (Normally, it stops 3-4 weeks before the event. Some negotiation is possible.)
- How many rooms do you need to book for convention guests of honour? Do they have specific requirements?
- What are the charges for small things that add up? How many tables do they provide as part of the contract? What’s the charge over that? (say for a vendor room). Is the a fee for vendors accessing electricity or wifi? What’s the cost to remove beds from hospitality suites?
- In general, what’s public wifi access like? Both in public hotel spaces and in your conference space. (This latter is still often bizarrely expensive, so calculate into your negotiations.)
- If you have a very techie audience, are there spaces for people to plug in a laptop and recharge and be out of the line of traffic for a programming space (but still see?) These things are not the end of the world for many conventions, but they’re nice touches.
Do you need to specify rooms for any reasons?
Hotels hate doing this, because it locks them into problems if someone *in* that room wants to stay an extra night. Generally, you need some leverage to make it work. (We’ve done it because those are the only two connected suites in their atrium, but even then, it’s been a sort of hard sell, and you may just not be able to manage it.)
This can be a pain if you need to advertise where the hospitality suite is, so figure out your solutions early.
From contract to event
Once you get your contract, look it over. Sleep on the details, if you can. Get other people to look at it, so you can catch anything missed.
Be clear about who is on the master account for the hotel. (This means “person who approves things the hotel charges money for”.) Generally, it should be your hotel chair, the conference chair, and maybe your treasurer. Anyone on there should have a solid understanding of the contract and what it covers, and what stuff to consult on. (And generally, the consulting should go through the hotel chair.)
Be really clear about how much you will owe them (recognising that some details may change), when, and how they accept payment. Generally, you will need to pay a deposit of some amount.
From signing the contract to about 3 months out
At this point you should have a general idea what things will be going in which room. It may be very useful at this point to have a good solid walkthrough with the core committee so people can see everything.
Count electrical outlets and see where they are. Note if there’s places you can’t put tables/etc. because there are fire doors. Consider lighting needs.
3 months out
Room specifics: You won’t have a full schedule yet, but you probably know if you need adjustments to any plans. (Do not panic about your room nights yet, though. I’m talking function space here.)
Food function planning: Discuss general food plans with the committee. You may want menu information to kick around ideas. (Bear in mind that the menus are composites, and you can generally make some number of substitutions relatively easily as long as they aren’t more expensive.)
Idea of AV plans Likewise, now is a good time to solidify what you’re looking at for AV plans - do you need mics? Specific sound gear? Screens? Projectors? Whiteboards? Signage? You won’t have full details yet but talking about it sooner than later does help.
Any other special considerations: Confirm that everyone understands what stuff the hotel is okay and not okay with. Even if you think they know. At this point, people get ideas about what’s going on, and it’s easier to rearrange them now than later.
One month out to a week out
Make final food function decisions: This includes both numbers (which are generally a ‘last week before’ deadline, and what you’re serving (which is a bit earlier.)
Food functions generally have a little flex - 5% is the most common number I’ve seen. (So if you say “100 people”, they’ll have enough food to reasonably feed 105.) This is good in that it gives you a little space, but does drive costs up.
Specific scheduling: In the last week or two, you will also work with the function space manager to arrange how you want rooms set up and when. Note that they generally need at least 30 minutes to do a reset, and generally like more.
(Thus, if you have mid-cycle resets, plan to do them yourself or find volunteers to do it. Often, this can be managed by saying “Hey, everyone? Our next event in here, they’d like to be in a circle, so could we have some help moving chairs?” loudly and cheerfully at the tail of the previous item. Thank people enthusiastically when done.)
You should include in your list any special notes about water refills - it may be easier to have water stations in some public area, rather than in the rooms, so that you don’t have hotel staff wandering through during your sessions. *Especially* discuss if you have rituals, meditation work, or other complex spaces going on.
Go over the final orders with a fine-tooth comb: they’re complicated, detailed, and if you don’t get them right now, they’re going to be horrible to fix later (because when you say “Yeah, that’s right” that’s what gets distributed to staff.)
Tables You should also now confirm tables for things like registration, information, flyers, vendor room, etc.
Pre-event wonkiness Recognise that *something* is going to go wonky somewhere in this process. This is normal. (I frankly don’t trust an event in which nothing goes wonky in the last month or so.) Also normal is panic about the fact that you’re two weeks from the convention, and OMG, this thing is .. should it be like that? Both pieces are much easier to cope with if you know they’re normal and will happen whether you want them or not.
(Note: Wonky does not mean ‘horribly wrong’, it means ‘Why is this person arguing over this totally minor thing that energetically, and really I don’t *care* what the dominant color in the hotel carpet is, I want to focus on the room schedule, argh!’ Some of you have heard me rant about whiteboards. Stupid stuff that is not make or break, but people fixate on for whatever reason.)
Checking the room list: Also in here, you will need to check the room list. Make sure the room dates are correct for the hospitality suite(s), guest of honour room(s), any other hosted suites, and so on. Confirm which rooms should go on the master account for the hotel.
It is also good at this point to get a count of how many rooms you have, and which types. You will want it for next year (this requires basic math. I like spreadsheets for this, but I’m geeky like that.)
Arrange payment Whatever the hotel requires here. Generally, it’s due 3-7 days in advance. Do whatever you need to do to make that happen, which probably involves negotiation with your treasurer.
Day of: Your hotel chair should plan to be at the hotel early. (Noon for an event where registration starts at 4 is plenty of time, probably. There’s a certain amount of sitting around in this process, but it helps to have the chair on site to answer questions. If that’s not possible, a fully informed deputy helps.)
The late afternoon and early evening are taken up with getting everything running smoothly. Hotel spaces are generally cooled for business clothing, so you may want to ask them to turn the cooling down a little (or the heat up) ,but remember to adjust for body heat. (So, a little cool when you start is fine.)
Find out early how to arrange adjustments for this, and who to talk to if you need help with a room. (Generally, it's something like "Pick up the white phone in any room, and press and you'll get connected to the front desk.")
Chances are, at least one person's room reservation will have gone wonky. Being a smiling friendly presence at the front desk when you find out about this makes your convention member feel better, and reassures the hotel.
Food functions
A few tips for food functions include:
- Accept the fact you are probably not going to satisfy everyone. If you work out an option where the vast majority of people can find food they like, you clearly communicate what the options are so people can supplement or prepare in a way that works for them, and so on, you are doing very well. Food functions get more complicated the more people you have, just because the logistics get harder.
- Do whatever you can to get decent food labelling, especially for common allergens. Hotels are less good about this than we'd all like, so warn people to ask. Asking about allergens on your registration form can help you plan for the most common ones (and help you decide if you need more vegetarian options, more gluten-free options, or both.)
- Buffet style (with reasonable separation of possible contaminants) is about as good as you get in some cases.
We had really good luck with a brunch that involved a yogurt bar (with a bunch of different things - fruit, granola, etc. - to mix in), a bagel bar (including non-dairy options for spreads), a sandwich station, and then a variety of things in metal dishes (eggs, nut loaf, potatoes of some kind, etc.)
- Timing food functions so they are not a primary meal can work too. (Last year's Paganicon had an evening dessert buffet and an afternoon tea with sandwiches and small desserts.) That way, if people have food restrictions, they're not totally starving through it.
- If people are seated initially, invite people with significant food restrictions go up first. (Let them self-identify, but usually this includes vegans, people with food allergies, gluten or dairy intolerance, etc.) This means they can select food they can eat without worrying it'll be all gone.
- Then invite people with mobility or other reasons they can’t deal well with lines (small children in arms, for example). This makes them happy and more comfortable.
- And finally, you can do everyone else, either table by table, or as they want, depending on your crowd of people.
After the event
You may have last minute adjustments to payment for whatever reason. (Additional meals for example.) Work through the math with the hotel staff. Usually, this can wait a few days.
If this is a repeating conference, and you have not already determined where you're doing it next year, now is a good time to do that while your pros and cons are still fresh in your head.
My credentials
I am currently incapable of walking into a hotel without starting to evaluate it as a possible location for a convention. There are days this is really annoying.
My actual cred involves being or helping be the hotel chair for Fourth Street Fantasy Convention in 2009 (150 person single-track convention), for Paganicon 2011 and Paganicon 2012 (both around 200-250 people, multiple programming track: the latter is taking place in about a week from when I write this), and Farthing Party 2012 (single track, 80ish people but in Montreal, so some different considerations.)
Fourth Street and the two Paganicons thus far were at the same hotel, partly because they treated us well, and their response to “Pagans?” was “Hey, cool! We get to do something different.” As opposed to at least one Twin Cities Metro hotel who So Clearly Didn’t Want Us. If you’re running a con in the Twin Cities metro, email me, and I’ll name names.
I’ve never done hotel for large conventions (partly because I mostly prefer to go to smaller ones), but the principles are largely the same except for the part where larger conventions have more leverage for some considerations - and have a lot more to coordinate. And one of these days, I really sort of want to volunteer to do it for a professional conference, so I can compare and contrast.
Are at the bottom of this post, but involve being hotel chair or assisting in it for four smaller entirely volunteer-run conventions over the past 4 years. Two in the SF world, two in the Pagan community, two of which I’m in the midst of as I write this post. (One - Paganicon 2012 - is about to happen, one - Farthing Party - where I’m working on initial details this week, so both parts of the process are fresh in my mind.)
A lot of the basic theory is the same for larger conventions, you just have somewhat more leverage in some directions, and a lot more complexity.
What you as an event attendee can do to help:
Before I get into the “How this works”, I figure I should start with some simple stuff that anyone who is attending a hotel-based event can do that makes the hotel chair’s life easier.
Buy your membership early if you can
This helps *so* much with planning numbers, it’s not even funny. Also with having budget for deposits and other fun things. Even if you can’t do the whole thing, a lot of conventions do a supporting membership - usually pay a little now, pay the rest later.
Don’t break the hotel or the hotel staff
This seems simple, but all too often goes wrong. Do your best to leave a space as tidy or tidier than you found it. If you can’t, let the hotel (and the event runners) know as soon as possible. It makes life easier for everyone. And whenever possible, bring a problem to the convention committee before bringing it to the hotel. (If your hotel room is flooding, call the hotel desk. If you have a problem with a function room space, try to find convention staff before you go at the hotel.)
If you can ask at a time people are not swamped, it is also better for everyone, if your question is not time-sensitive. Your hotel chair is likely swamped from about 3 weeks before the event until about 24 hours after it starts. (After that, it improves.)
Your hotel will be swamped when lots of people are trying to check in (so about 4pm to 8pm the first night, for a weekend con), plus whatever else they have going on.
Consult early and often
If you are part of planning the event in some way (including proposing a panel or workshop), and if you have an idea that involves food, drink, water (other than drinking water), potential mess, animals (other than service animals), noise, putting signs up, tape in general, public spaces of the hotel, moving furniture, candles, ritual blades, or ritual food/drink: make sure you include the hotel chair in your discussions.
All of the above may be affected by contract or hotel requirements. (I think I’ve hit all the major points, but if not, I’m sure someone will tell me and I’ll edit.)
Understand that hotel contracts are complicated
For most events - at least of the fan or volunteer-run sort - the specifics are series of best-guess compromises. (Much more on that below.) Alas, budgets are not infinite, and unlike some professional conferences (the ones where people pretty much have to go, for example), it can be very hard to guess attendance numbers which makes some pieces of the planning very very stressful and complicated.
Also, there are some things that might technically be possible, but that the hotel chair feels might be one thing too many to ask the hotel. Trust their judgement, or find a different hotel chair next time, but second-guessing them or pushing once they’ve said “No, I really don’t want to go there, and here’s why” does no one any good.
What costs money may be different than you think
Hotel are businesses, and they need to make money to keep being hotels. But exactly *what* costs money may be different than you’d assume. Food functions are absurdly expensive compared to what you could probably arrange yourself - but there’s reasons for this. (See corkage explanation below.) Same thing for dealing with AV equipment.
In contrast, room rates (especially if you can promise a reasonable number of rooms) or even function space (in an off season time) can be amazingly affordable.
Your hotel chair - if they’re any good - is balancing all of those things against “Hey, there’s this really cool thing we’d like to do.” and “Oh, here’s our budget.” This is not simple, but can be really rewarding.
Spread an understanding of corkage far and wide.
Short version: if it involves food or drink, and it is taking place in a hotel function space (not a private room or the hotel’s own restaurant, etc), your hotel chair should be in the loop, because you are risking hitting contract issues bigtime.
Briefly, corkage is the fee that hotels charge to allow you to bring in outside food or drink in public hotel spaces (generally, rooms or suites, even for things like a con-run hospitality suite are easily waived from these fees, but getting a function space waived is a lot harder. It’s usually also easier to make the argument if you’re serving something that would not be on the hotel menu anyway - snacks and light nibbles are a different thing than actual sit-down meals or formal reception food.)
These fees can be for bottles of alcohol (which is where the term comes from) or can be for the food. Neither is cheap. Both can be really frustrating to deal with. And in general, it’s not worth doing until the con is a fairly substantial size (you need something bigger than a suite to hold hospitality) or you have other specific requirements. Either way, expect a noticeable jump in your expenses.
They place these fees high in order to encourage you to buy their food instead of bringing in your own from outside. When you break it down per person and realise the labour costs, the food rates are not *entirely* unreasonable - but they do add up really fast.
(To give some Twin Cities numbers: A cheese and fruit reception thing or bite-size dessert buffet runs $4-5 a person. A moderate to reasonably lavish brunch runs $20-25 per person. Not including taxes or gratuity, which run about 30% combined. To give you a comparison, a meal in their restaurant runs in the $10-20 range including tax and tip.)
Hotels flex in different places, for different reasons
A hotel will make more compromises in its contracts when it’s not sure it’s going to get other options. (This is good business). So, an event in a major tourist destination in high season will naturally be more expensive than one somewhere less appealing at an off-season. (Say, Minnesota in March, which also manages to miss wedding season.)
But there’s also some other interesting bits here, that are very location dependent - I go into them below.
Anyway, don’t assume that what worked for this convention over there is going to be the same thing for that convention over here. Different cities, different times of year, even different parts of a metro area may have vastly different profiles and costs. (Notably, in wedding season, if you want to take over the spaces that usually hold weddings, you have to pay them enough money to make that worth it to them. Weddings are big money.)
If you want to be extra nice to your hotel chair
Make sure she or he can easily find a place to sit down, especially for the first 24 hours of the convention. (There is a *lot* of running back and forth involved). Check and see if they’ve eaten.
After the first 12 hours or so, dragging them off somewhere to eat where people cannot immediately grab them with non-urgent questions is a prize beyond virtue. (Don’t go too far - we’re talking back corner of the hotel restaurant or a very nearby place here, not across town. But out of line of sight is really good.) Making it easy for them to get their quick energy food or quick caffeine-like substance of choice can also be very handy.
(If you are contemplating this for me, at conventions I run on chocolate, diet Coke, and a need to eat lunch on the early side. Having company for breakfast is also awesome, because I tend to be up early. Good Indian, Chinese, or other Asian food options delight me.)
Ok. So if you are still interested in the topic, I shall move onto the basics of what I know about hotel chair work.
Hotel chair duties and necessary skills
Generally, the duties involve:
- Choosing a hotel (in collaboration with other board members)
- Negotiating the contract
- Coordinating plans for the use of space, and working through them with the hotel.
- Coordinating AV and food needs
- Generally being around to make things go smoothly once the event starts (chance are you will have one or two people who have hotel room issues, stuff will go wonky somewhere, etc.)
The necessary skills are:
- Ability to go look at the hotel or delegate someone who will look at the right things to do it.
- Ability to deal with contract pieces (Someone who does business-type conversations comfortably is a good move here. You don’t need to be super savvy about every detail, but you need to know how to to ask the right questions, and to present concerns and needs in a way the hotel can make sense out of. It does take social skills.)
- Good to excellent organizational ability. You will be coordinating emails between your convention staff, the person dealing with room details at the hotel, the person dealing with function space set-up and food needs at the hotel, any AV or other rental needs, and possibly other people. (I currently have two draft emails open in my Gmail, because I’m waiting for other people to get back to me.)
- Related to the above, a willingness to nag people if they don’t get back to you in a reasonable span of time, in a way that will not annoy them too much. It is not a good task for someone who hates to say “That thing I asked you last week? Where are we with that?”
- Reliable access to whatever communication tools you’re using. (The couple of weeks before the convention, I am in my email dealing with stuff *all the time*.) Good written communication skills are pretty necessary.
On the other hand, I have a harder time with phone calls - I share an office, and going elsewhere is a) complicated and b) means I don’t have my computer (and thus, previous emails with questions) handy. Fortunately, right now, I’m an hour ahead of the hotel, and get off work at 4pm my time anyway, so I just arrange to call them when I get home.
I’ve found you can do most things via email, but there are times phone is *way* faster. Or IM. Clarify with the relevant parties how you prefer to do things, and when it’s okay to call or IM you.
Talking about what you’re doing
Part of the process of talking to hotels is talking about what you’re doing, and what the event is like. Some hotels have seen SF cons for decades. Others will blink at you. We had an experience with one hotel we looked at for Paganicon last year who Very Clearly Didn’t Want Us (and then quoted a truly exorbitant rate - I am not kidding when I say it was 4 times what our base commitment to the hotel we chose was, for less stuff.)
You do not want to surprise your hotel, so be up front and open, but in a way that connects to what they’re used to dealing with. For Paganicon, I found that something like “Are you familiar with science fiction conventions (and named two they’d hosted)? We’re like that. We’re planning on 3-4 tracks of programming sessions, a dealer room, a hospitality suite, and some music events - acoustic or lightly amplified, focus on various topics of interest to the modern Pagan and nature-based religious community.” worked pretty well.
[Yes, I know, this is a very general description of the Pagan community. For the hotel’s purposes, it worked just fine. They do not care about cosmological details.]
You should know that hotels see a lot more business conventions than fannish or other community ones, and there are some lingo differences. What we normally call the Vendor or Dealer room, they tend to call Exhibits. There are different names for “hospitality suites” floating around, but that tends to work better than “con suite” Life is easier if your hotel chair is comfortable code switching for different settings.
Picking your hotel:
The first step in all of this is choosing a hotel, and different events will have different priorities. Very few hotels will be perfect (match everything you want in a single location) so you will probably have to make some compromises.
My preferred method for this is to do some initial research online (based on general location, then looking at the hotel website and checking function space maps + sizes, a vague idea of room rates and options, etc.) and then go look at them. (Or have someone go look at them.)
Big considerations include:
- Cost (both for function space and per room night)
- Layout and location of function space
- Nearby food options
- Ease of access (parking, public transit) and general location
- How willing the hotel is to work with your kind of event.
Location
Some cons are peripatetic, so you start with “Which city are we doing this thing in?” And sometimes, the available hotels in an area have other issues, so you end up looking in new locations or compromising on something else. This is probably the first thing you need to sort out.
Some cons care a great deal about people being able to get to a range of interesting local restaurants, or be easily accessible from the airport. Others care more about other things.
It’s worth noting that being in the middle of a city ups your costs in several ways. Both the obvious one (property costs tend to be higher), but also that parking will likely cost more, and there may be city-wide taxes. (In the Twin Cities metro area, this is a 4-5% difference on hotel rooms, function space, etc. between being in Minneapolis or St. Paul or Bloomington, and being in, say, St. Louis Park.)
Basic space
Hotels have lots of different space configurations. There is a hotel in Minneapolis I (and many other people) would *love* to use for conventions (it’s on top of a community midtown market with awesome food options, great transit access, and across the street from one of the city SF and mystery bookstores). Alas, they have no function space that will hold more than about 80 people (and not that many function rooms), which is just too small for most events of our kind.
Some hotels have space, but it is weirdly laid out, or you have to wander from point A to B in confusing ways. Sometimes this is worth it for other reasons, but it’s suboptimal, will annoy a noticeable portion of your attendees, complicates things like dealer room placement, and has accessibility considerations. It also increases wear and tear on your con committee and key volunteers, who will be running madly around the space.
(Last year at Paganicon we did this, because the cost savings were substantial, and as a first year event, we weren’t sure about attendance. This year, we’re in their upstairs space, and I am *so* looking forward to everything being across the hall from everything else.)
You may also want to have an eye out for electrical outlets, wifi access, air circulation/ventilation, and whether the chlorine from the pool is present in the function spaces.
Room rates and types
Hotels like to rent out their sleeping rooms. (Logical, right?) When they book an event, they will usually offer a room rate that is better than what’s on their website, to encourage people to stay there. (Our room rate for Paganicon this year was $20 less than their usual rate advertised right now, just to give you an idea.)
However, this comes with a complication: they would like you to *commit* to a certain number of rooms in your contract. (More on that below.) This requires your hotel chair to estimate, make guesses, and then finally throw up their hands and pray.
For volunteer-run convention models (rather than, say, business or professional conventions) you want a hotel with a reasonable number of double/doubles (two double beds, one room) because people will want to share, some king beds, and some suites. Paganicon is currently running at a ratio of about 4 double rooms to 2 kings to 1 suite. Lots of people may want to share rooms.
Food options
Once you have people at your convention, they would like to eat. Some people manage with the hotel restaurants (which vary vastly in quality, have varying approaches to dealing with dietary limitations, can be very slow, are often not as cheap as other options, and can get boring, anyway.)
So, lots of conventions like finding places where there are a wider range of food options. (One of the reasons we like the Paganicon hotel is that there are about 7 decent options, including very inexpensive ones, within a block radius, and the hotel restaurant is one of the better of its kind. This is a lot better than some of the airport hotels, where you really need a car to go anywhere other than the hotel option.)
Function space
You want to consider what you’re doing in your function space. If you have a keynote or big event (a dance, a big concert, whatever), you will want a space big enough to hold most of your attendees at one time. (Some fraction will not be at any given event. How big that fraction is, varies, but 85%-90% present is a reasonable number to start with, I think.)
How do you know how big your convention will be? Good question. Welcome to one of the many mysteries of being hotel chair. You can make some guesses from similar conventions, or determine that you want to have an upper membership cap, and you can do some things to encourage early registration (like lower rates until a certain date, or supporting memberships).
If you are doing single-track programming, you need space that will hold most of your convention. If you are doing multiple-track programming, you need spaces that can be broken down to a reasonable size for each track. (People swimming in large open spaces is annoying.)
Accessibility
This is this far down the list not because it isn’t important, but because you need to have specific hotels in mind before it makes sense to look here. (Hotel websites are Really Uninformative about general accessibility issues.)
Walk every route someone might walk during the convention (function space to function space, function space to where you get to hotel rooms, function space to hotel doors, function space to restaurants, function space to bathrooms), paying attention to the following:
- Is the space actually accessible? (In the US, ADA means that it should be, but there are some *weird* retrofittings out there.)
- Are there unexpected stairs anywhere attendees might want to go? If so, what’s the way around that? How annoying is it?
- Where are the bathrooms in relationship to the function space, and is that a pain in the neck? Can people (including those using mobility aids or who move slowly) reasonably make it to the bathrooms and back during a programming break?
- Can you have all your function space on one floor, to avoid waits for the elevators?
- How much of a pain is it to, say, go from the function space to the restaurant, for someone in a wheelchair. (This is possible, but sort of a pain, in the current Paganicon hotel, because of where the elevator is.)
- How does the hotel handle fridges for medication (is there a charge? Is it first-come-first-serve?) What about accessible rooms?
- What accessibility needs do you know you have in the community likely to be there?
You also want to look at noise (is there a night club that runs until 4am on weekends? Anyone who is prone to migraines or who is a light sleeper will be cranky about it), if you want scent-free spaces (layout of the function space matters here), and whether the layout of whatever you’re planning to use for hospitality space will work for your plans.
Transportation options
How are people going to get to you? Will they have cars to park? How much of a pain is public transit?
There may be some weird quirks - the Paganicon hotel is not allowed to run free shuttles to the airport because they’re outside a certain radius from the airport. But they do shuttles to the light rail, and there are other transit options.
Other considerations
If you’re running an event that repeats yearly (or whenever) it is worth your time to a) investigate a bunch of options and b) try to pick one that gives you room to grow. If you have a good event, the hotel is a lot more likely to make things easier for you the next time (plus, you’ll already know a lot about how they work, what’s easy, etc.)
For example, we got a surprisingly good deal (substantially more function space in a better layout, for what is probably less actual money than last year, but I don’t have final numbers yet) with this year’s Paganicon contract because a) they knew we were a pretty good crowd who treated the hotel and staff well b) we bought lots of alcohol (they stocked mead and hard cider for us, which helped), c) lots of people ate in the restaurant, and d) we wanted to do this in what is a very slow season for them.
The triad of negotiation:
So, how does this contract negotiation thing work? Basically, all contracts are some combination of the following three things: room nights, food functions, and flat out “pay us X to rent Y space for Z time” charges.
This is the point where you go to the hotel, and say something like "I'd be interested in holding an event for around X-Y people on your hotel, probably around Z room nights, at Q time, with [whatever options: cash bar, food function, whatever.]
They then draft a proposal, and you look it over, and decide from there. Doing this with multiple hotels is useful (three is a nice number), and can sometimes let you do fun bargaining conversations. (Sometimes, you get three proposals, and one of them is the clear winner, or one or more hotels aren't free the weekends you want, or whatever.)
Room nights
The hotel would like to have people stay in its rooms. (This is logical, right? That’s why they’re a hotel.)
So, the contract piece here involves you saying “Well, we think we’ll have X nights of people staying in your rooms” and committing to that. If you guess wrong and don’t have enough numbers, there are penalties, and those are usually based on the percentage of rooms you did fill.
(So filling 80% is a lot better than filling 40%, and in the latter case, you’re looking at making up a substantial chunk of cost to the hotel. Like thousands and thousands, even if it’s a small con, because the penalties are based on what the hotel would have made if those rooms had been rented.)
This is an area to read your contract *very carefully* in, and to negotiate something that balances getting you a good deal on space with not exposing you to too much risk. It is much better to guess low, as long as the hotel will allow you to raise the room cap (not a problem in my experience as long as they’ve got space.)
Food functions
Hotels make money by selling you food, too. Food functions are a handy way to do this, and can range from a cash bar to reception food to a full buffet to a sit-down meal.
The really handy thing about food functions from a hotel chair’s perspective is that they scale your costs. If you’re not certain how many people you’re going to get, it’s a lot easier to build scaling into your food contract than into either your room night or function space commitments. There is usually a minimum, but in the contracts I’ve worked on, it hasn’t been very hard to reach it if you have 75-100 people.
(The other handy bit is that you’re giving people more for their money: instead of X amount for space, you get Y amount (which is often not hugely more than X amount) for space + food. And shared food is a useful community bonding thing in all sorts of ways. Downside is that people have specific food needs and preferences, so it can be tricky to build a food function that suits everyone.)
Last year’s Paganicon, we basically built the budget on the food functions - first year event, not sure how many people we were going to have. What we could do is say “Ok, X amount of each person’s registration basically covers their food, which basically covers our space” (once we hit our minimum.) Then, when we had about twice that number of actual registrations, we could have more flexibility in other areas.
This was because we really weren’t sure how many room nights we were going to end up with, and didn’t want to commit huge amounts to function space costs if we could avoid it. Likewise, we made the choice to take their smaller function space (with some logistical complications) because it was substantially cheaper (we got the space basically for free with our food function agreements because they knew it wouldn’t be in demand for other events, and their upper space might be).
This year’s contract, we built on room nights and function space charges, and made the decision to pay for a much better (and larger) space upstairs. We’re doing a cash bar, but that’s the only food function this time around.
Again, rememember that your food function costs likely do not include taxes and gratuity (and that’s probably around 30%). Budget those in. Now.
Function space charges
This is, as above, the flat “You pay us X, you get the space for Y time” agreement. It’s the most clear cut one, but a) it isn’t very flexible and b) be aware that you need to compete for whatever else they’d put in that space at that time. (Namely, weddings, which are any weekend convention’s big competition most of the time.) It’s also especially hard on conventions where the leadership changes from year to year, or where there isn’t a persistent buffer in the bank account.
Bonus challenges and opportunities
There are a few other things that affect contracts.
Time of year
As mentioned, off-season events for the area tend to be cheaper than high season ones. This can vary hugely and not for the obvious reasons, like, say, the weather. (Though people wanting Minnesota as a destination in the winter is lower than, say, Florida.)
The Paganicon hotel is in a heavily Jewish area of the Twin Cities metro (they maintain a fully kosher kitchen, as well) so it gets a great deal of wedding traffic. However, there are times during the Jewish calendar year when weddings are (much) less common. Navigating this can lead to good contract options, and a lot more flexibility with space.
Be aware that the hotel may have other specific conferences that return year after year, and you may have to navigate around those dates. (Picking a date for your convention is a whole other topic, but the Paganicon dates generally try to avoid two local SF conventions, Easter (when people may have family commitments), and the spring equinox. Everything else we’ll flex for.)
First time events
As noted, you’re doing an extra amount of guesswork with a first time event. In this case, negotiating for as much flexible stuff as you can (basing it on food rather than room nights) is a smart move.
Future events
Especially if you’re booking in a low season, hotels will likely be very willing to give you a good deal in hopes of future events. They’d rather have an event that’s cheaper than they’d do at other times of year than not have anything booked at all.
Special permissions and consideration:
When considering your event, there’s a bunch of special things to consider beyond the above. In no particular order, except the first.
Corkage : I can’t say it often enough. Corkage matters, corkage confuses people, and corkage must be obeyed. Understand the limits, and share them widely with your committee.
Knives: Do not startle the hotel. Whether you’re an SF event with people who like costuming or a Pagan event with ritual tools, if you think people might even vaguely contemplating having costume pieces or ritual pieces, talk early to your hotel about how to handle that.
(A good default for ritual tools is “Only the minimum needed, in the hands of the presenters, and otherwise locked in private hotel rooms”. Bear state law in mind with this - Massachusetts, for example, has notoriously tight knife laws. For costume pieces, blunt and peacebound is a good restriction for the con - it’s easy to knock someone on the head with a costume piece in tight quarters, and it still hurts.)
Candles: Generally, hotels are fine with candles in glass containers, but are happier if you keep them to the minimum needed. Check anyway. Do not surprise the hotel: it will not make anyone happy.
Alcohol: Alcohol in religious ritual use may be fine with the hotel, but ask first. (Sense a theme here?) Be very clear about the token amount.
Alcohol in your hospitality suite is a larger question: it gets expensive, you need to make sure you’re monitoring for legal drinking age, and it can skew the attendance of your event in the directions you may or may not want. Consider carefully. (Also, consider how many of your likely attendees may be in recovery, or not drink, or not be around people who are.) Also, consider corkage. (Generally, as noted, corkage waivers for a suite are relatively simple.)
(We’re doing a cash bar at one evening event this year, and the hospitality suite remains alcohol free. Other groups hosting suites are welcome to provide alcohol as long as they have a clear plan in place to monitor legal age.)
Noise (both external to event and internal): People in groups make noise. Be up front with the hotel about when and how that will happen. (Frankly, most of the fan-run conventions I know make a lot less noise than your average wedding, but convincing hotels of that when you say “live music” can be tricky.)
Anyway. Put the noisy stuff where it won’t affect other guests. Put the not-noisy stuff places it won’t have lots of noise to fight with. Consider whether background noise (from the pool, from the lobby, from other events) will filter into your programming or vendor space, and how much of a problem that will be.
Things affecting other guests (hallway, access, etc.): Talk to the hotel about what they need for other guests in the hotel, ways your room scheduling may affect them, etc. Be aware of where non-convention members may try and wander in. (We had a lot of people wander by the dealer room last year.)
Also, have a clear policy about not interfering with use of the hotel by other guests, what appropriate clothing is, and related things.
Hospitality suites, bed removal, and ice in the bathtub
On a small scale (i.e. hospitality suite in a hotel suite rather than function space), you probably want to remove the beds (this will cost money) and figure out how to keep drinks cold.
Throwing room parties (which includes the subclass ‘run a hospitality suite’) is an art all of its own, in which I am but a .. ok, maybe I’m a journeyman now. The master-class treatise on the subject is over here.
The classic solution for cold drinks is to put ice in the bathtub (generally lining it with plastic to prevent scratches). Hotels are not terribly happy with this, and it’s also sort of a pain in the neck.
When this came up at the Paganicon hotel, they thought about it, and said “You know, we have one of those big fridges for soda you can have for the weekend - we only need it for really big events.” (Glass-sided, big door that opens, shelves spaced for cans and bottles.) We enthusiastically said yes, and it works *wonderfully*. They’re happy, we’re happy, people who do not have to dig through ice to find their beverage of choice are happy.
You can also ask about other fridges - just make sure you put them in places people can get at them, even when there’s a cluster of people standing around talking and not moving for half an hour at a time. (People do that. It’s better to plan for it than get cranky.)
Security considerations
Even small events can have security needs. An event of 100-200 people doesn’t need a major intense security plan, but it’s good to know who’s in charge, who can handle which kinds of issues, and when you bring in the hotel and when you try to defuse yourself. Communicate where to go for help clearly to your membership.
Generally, having a committee member or some way to get one fast in a public location most of the hours of the convention (say 9am to the end of your last programming item) is a really smart idea. (“get one fast” can be a designated person who a) has their phone on vibrate, and b) tells the person on desk where they are.)
Having something where you can say “We don’t expect any problems, but here’s our policies, and you can find someone who can get the committee person on duty here at these times.” makes the hotel happier. We like that. (They should also have a way to contact the hotel chair and anyone else with budgetary discretion on the hotel account - this should be the event chair and maybe the event treasurer, depending on the committee structure.)
Chlorine and pools
Hotel pools are a pleasant thing. The sickly smell of chlorine invading every programming space is not. Ideally, bring someone sensitive to chlorine with you when you do your pre-contract explorations, and have them wander around the likely spaces for a bit. If not, do your best to figure out if this will be an issue. Most pools are more heavily chemically managed in high season than in low.
Remember that pools also produce noise, if they acquire happy children playing games. (Or happy adults letting off steam.) It is tedious to have that filter into your Very Serious Topic discussion.
Other chemical sensitivities
Hotels are limited in what cleaning products they use (they go through a lot, they have to clean fast, and it’s the kind of thing that chains tend to set globally.)
However, you can ask (and should) about whether they can avoid scented cleaning products in programming spaces at particular times, or things like that. (Just find a time they *can* clean - and that’s not going to be 11pm at night, probably.)
Other things to check
There are other things you will want to know early in the process:
- How long does your room rate extend? (Normally, it stops 3-4 weeks before the event. Some negotiation is possible.)
- How many rooms do you need to book for convention guests of honour? Do they have specific requirements?
- What are the charges for small things that add up? How many tables do they provide as part of the contract? What’s the charge over that? (say for a vendor room). Is the a fee for vendors accessing electricity or wifi? What’s the cost to remove beds from hospitality suites?
- In general, what’s public wifi access like? Both in public hotel spaces and in your conference space. (This latter is still often bizarrely expensive, so calculate into your negotiations.)
- If you have a very techie audience, are there spaces for people to plug in a laptop and recharge and be out of the line of traffic for a programming space (but still see?) These things are not the end of the world for many conventions, but they’re nice touches.
Do you need to specify rooms for any reasons?
Hotels hate doing this, because it locks them into problems if someone *in* that room wants to stay an extra night. Generally, you need some leverage to make it work. (We’ve done it because those are the only two connected suites in their atrium, but even then, it’s been a sort of hard sell, and you may just not be able to manage it.)
This can be a pain if you need to advertise where the hospitality suite is, so figure out your solutions early.
From contract to event
Once you get your contract, look it over. Sleep on the details, if you can. Get other people to look at it, so you can catch anything missed.
Be clear about who is on the master account for the hotel. (This means “person who approves things the hotel charges money for”.) Generally, it should be your hotel chair, the conference chair, and maybe your treasurer. Anyone on there should have a solid understanding of the contract and what it covers, and what stuff to consult on. (And generally, the consulting should go through the hotel chair.)
Be really clear about how much you will owe them (recognising that some details may change), when, and how they accept payment. Generally, you will need to pay a deposit of some amount.
From signing the contract to about 3 months out
At this point you should have a general idea what things will be going in which room. It may be very useful at this point to have a good solid walkthrough with the core committee so people can see everything.
Count electrical outlets and see where they are. Note if there’s places you can’t put tables/etc. because there are fire doors. Consider lighting needs.
3 months out
Room specifics: You won’t have a full schedule yet, but you probably know if you need adjustments to any plans. (Do not panic about your room nights yet, though. I’m talking function space here.)
Food function planning: Discuss general food plans with the committee. You may want menu information to kick around ideas. (Bear in mind that the menus are composites, and you can generally make some number of substitutions relatively easily as long as they aren’t more expensive.)
Idea of AV plans Likewise, now is a good time to solidify what you’re looking at for AV plans - do you need mics? Specific sound gear? Screens? Projectors? Whiteboards? Signage? You won’t have full details yet but talking about it sooner than later does help.
Any other special considerations: Confirm that everyone understands what stuff the hotel is okay and not okay with. Even if you think they know. At this point, people get ideas about what’s going on, and it’s easier to rearrange them now than later.
One month out to a week out
Make final food function decisions: This includes both numbers (which are generally a ‘last week before’ deadline, and what you’re serving (which is a bit earlier.)
Food functions generally have a little flex - 5% is the most common number I’ve seen. (So if you say “100 people”, they’ll have enough food to reasonably feed 105.) This is good in that it gives you a little space, but does drive costs up.
Specific scheduling: In the last week or two, you will also work with the function space manager to arrange how you want rooms set up and when. Note that they generally need at least 30 minutes to do a reset, and generally like more.
(Thus, if you have mid-cycle resets, plan to do them yourself or find volunteers to do it. Often, this can be managed by saying “Hey, everyone? Our next event in here, they’d like to be in a circle, so could we have some help moving chairs?” loudly and cheerfully at the tail of the previous item. Thank people enthusiastically when done.)
You should include in your list any special notes about water refills - it may be easier to have water stations in some public area, rather than in the rooms, so that you don’t have hotel staff wandering through during your sessions. *Especially* discuss if you have rituals, meditation work, or other complex spaces going on.
Go over the final orders with a fine-tooth comb: they’re complicated, detailed, and if you don’t get them right now, they’re going to be horrible to fix later (because when you say “Yeah, that’s right” that’s what gets distributed to staff.)
Tables You should also now confirm tables for things like registration, information, flyers, vendor room, etc.
Pre-event wonkiness Recognise that *something* is going to go wonky somewhere in this process. This is normal. (I frankly don’t trust an event in which nothing goes wonky in the last month or so.) Also normal is panic about the fact that you’re two weeks from the convention, and OMG, this thing is .. should it be like that? Both pieces are much easier to cope with if you know they’re normal and will happen whether you want them or not.
(Note: Wonky does not mean ‘horribly wrong’, it means ‘Why is this person arguing over this totally minor thing that energetically, and really I don’t *care* what the dominant color in the hotel carpet is, I want to focus on the room schedule, argh!’ Some of you have heard me rant about whiteboards. Stupid stuff that is not make or break, but people fixate on for whatever reason.)
Checking the room list: Also in here, you will need to check the room list. Make sure the room dates are correct for the hospitality suite(s), guest of honour room(s), any other hosted suites, and so on. Confirm which rooms should go on the master account for the hotel.
It is also good at this point to get a count of how many rooms you have, and which types. You will want it for next year (this requires basic math. I like spreadsheets for this, but I’m geeky like that.)
Arrange payment Whatever the hotel requires here. Generally, it’s due 3-7 days in advance. Do whatever you need to do to make that happen, which probably involves negotiation with your treasurer.
Day of: Your hotel chair should plan to be at the hotel early. (Noon for an event where registration starts at 4 is plenty of time, probably. There’s a certain amount of sitting around in this process, but it helps to have the chair on site to answer questions. If that’s not possible, a fully informed deputy helps.)
The late afternoon and early evening are taken up with getting everything running smoothly. Hotel spaces are generally cooled for business clothing, so you may want to ask them to turn the cooling down a little (or the heat up) ,but remember to adjust for body heat. (So, a little cool when you start is fine.)
Find out early how to arrange adjustments for this, and who to talk to if you need help with a room. (Generally, it's something like "Pick up the white phone in any room, and press
Chances are, at least one person's room reservation will have gone wonky. Being a smiling friendly presence at the front desk when you find out about this makes your convention member feel better, and reassures the hotel.
Food functions
A few tips for food functions include:
- Accept the fact you are probably not going to satisfy everyone. If you work out an option where the vast majority of people can find food they like, you clearly communicate what the options are so people can supplement or prepare in a way that works for them, and so on, you are doing very well. Food functions get more complicated the more people you have, just because the logistics get harder.
- Do whatever you can to get decent food labelling, especially for common allergens. Hotels are less good about this than we'd all like, so warn people to ask. Asking about allergens on your registration form can help you plan for the most common ones (and help you decide if you need more vegetarian options, more gluten-free options, or both.)
- Buffet style (with reasonable separation of possible contaminants) is about as good as you get in some cases.
We had really good luck with a brunch that involved a yogurt bar (with a bunch of different things - fruit, granola, etc. - to mix in), a bagel bar (including non-dairy options for spreads), a sandwich station, and then a variety of things in metal dishes (eggs, nut loaf, potatoes of some kind, etc.)
- Timing food functions so they are not a primary meal can work too. (Last year's Paganicon had an evening dessert buffet and an afternoon tea with sandwiches and small desserts.) That way, if people have food restrictions, they're not totally starving through it.
- If people are seated initially, invite people with significant food restrictions go up first. (Let them self-identify, but usually this includes vegans, people with food allergies, gluten or dairy intolerance, etc.) This means they can select food they can eat without worrying it'll be all gone.
- Then invite people with mobility or other reasons they can’t deal well with lines (small children in arms, for example). This makes them happy and more comfortable.
- And finally, you can do everyone else, either table by table, or as they want, depending on your crowd of people.
After the event
You may have last minute adjustments to payment for whatever reason. (Additional meals for example.) Work through the math with the hotel staff. Usually, this can wait a few days.
If this is a repeating conference, and you have not already determined where you're doing it next year, now is a good time to do that while your pros and cons are still fresh in your head.
My credentials
I am currently incapable of walking into a hotel without starting to evaluate it as a possible location for a convention. There are days this is really annoying.
My actual cred involves being or helping be the hotel chair for Fourth Street Fantasy Convention in 2009 (150 person single-track convention), for Paganicon 2011 and Paganicon 2012 (both around 200-250 people, multiple programming track: the latter is taking place in about a week from when I write this), and Farthing Party 2012 (single track, 80ish people but in Montreal, so some different considerations.)
Fourth Street and the two Paganicons thus far were at the same hotel, partly because they treated us well, and their response to “Pagans?” was “Hey, cool! We get to do something different.” As opposed to at least one Twin Cities Metro hotel who So Clearly Didn’t Want Us. If you’re running a con in the Twin Cities metro, email me, and I’ll name names.
I’ve never done hotel for large conventions (partly because I mostly prefer to go to smaller ones), but the principles are largely the same except for the part where larger conventions have more leverage for some considerations - and have a lot more to coordinate. And one of these days, I really sort of want to volunteer to do it for a professional conference, so I can compare and contrast.
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Date: 2012-03-07 12:18 am (UTC)As someone who has worked very closely with our (new) hotel liason/chair for a mid-sized event this past year, I can say with certainty that all of your point are still valid on a larger scale. (For reference, we had about 6000 attending.. which was 200% growth from last year.) It's a lot of work to the job. Those who can do it well are truly a lifesaver for the other chairs/board members.
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Date: 2012-03-07 02:01 am (UTC)It is a lot of work, but I'm reminded this week why I like it - it's the making order out of chaos.
(Also, I like getting the ego-boo of hotels going "Hey, you're really organised about this, *thank you*")
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Date: 2012-03-07 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-07 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-07 03:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-07 03:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-09 02:29 am (UTC)