Leslie,
Harald asked this question back on Mon, 16 Dec 2002, "Subject: [iesg-secretary #4705] Defusing cookie rants..". Marcia Beaulieu answered on Tue, 17 Dec 2002, "Subject: [iesg-secretary #4722] Fwd: [old #4705] Defusing cookie rants....".
Her answer follows:
---------------------------------------
"Harald,
I checked with the Minneapolis Hilton regarding meeting room rental. Last
March
we got the meeting rooms complimentary and our food and beverage cost was
approximately $250,000.
If we do not do any food and beverage at the upcoming November 2003 meeting
in Minneapolis, the room rental would be approximately $238,000. This is a
50%
discount from the rack rate since we use the majority of sleeping
rooms. This cost
is based on holding the rooms on a 24 hour basis. If we use the rooms only
from
8:00am-5:00pm, the meeting room rental would be half the amount above,
approximately $119,000.
Marcia"
--------------------------------
While I am sure we will hear all kinds of arguments that that can't be right, folks asking about the money they save by not serving food, but a hotel wants a meeting to serve food. They worry about keeping their people busy as they are paying them and it is bad management to have them sitting around. If we take the meeting rooms only until 5:00PM, and they really mean it, we will have to vacate because they will rent those rooms out for dinner and reception functions. The thing the hotel can do is shift the hours their people work. The hotel looks to gain a certain revenue stream from their venue, they would prefer to get it by putting a package together that keeps all their people busy, if they can't get it that way they will get it another way.
I should point out that is only one hotel where we are well known. Some hotels may refuse to even consider us if we don't buy a package that contains food. I have suggested to Harald that we not slice the budget this way as we will have 2000 people trying to manage the meeting. Other associations usually publish it as meeting expense and don't try and break it down into A/V, Food,etc. That doesn't mean the BoD doesn't see a breakdown.
Al
At 11:09 AM -0500 1/22/03, Leslie Daigle wrote:
I agree with the desire to stop guessing at the potential questions. However, the "we should have less cookies!" assertion has been roundly debated on the IETF list on several occasions already. I, for one, would prefer to attempt to head it off with a little bit of explanation (e.g., Al, can you provide some guestimates of how much room rental might be if we didn't buy cookies?). Leslie. Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
--On tirsdag, januar 21, 2003 14:50:37 -0500 "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@research.att.com> wrote:
I think it's actually time to get this into the public view, and see what questions *really* get asked. We are capable of generating all to much fear, uncertainty and doubt when we theorize.I agree that folk will wonder about the number. It might make sense to add to the side a note saying this is roughly $140 per paid attendee.We can/should post a similar analysis about the reserve fund, in terms of how many attendees "missing" per meeting would drain it.
And be ready to answer the questions....
one final note: this is the money we *used* in 2001. In planning, this is mainly useful as baseline data. No matter of second-guessing will change what the amounts were in 2001. And they'll be different for 2002, no matter what.
Harald
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------- "An essential element of a successful journey is recognizing when you have arrived." -- ThinkingCat (c.1983 - 2002) Leslie Daigle leslie@thinkingcat.com -------------------------------------------------------------------
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"An essential element of a successful journey
is recognizing when you have arrived."
-- ThinkingCat (c.1983 - 2002)
Leslie Daigle
leslie@thinkingcat.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------