Don't Come To The Meeting

WHAT?” you may be asking. “Why shouldn't I come to the Annual Convention in San Francisco? It is my right as a dues-paying member of GAWDA, my responsibility as a representative of my company, and my duty as a leader in the industry!”

Exactly! The same can be said about attendance at the Regional Meetings and the Spring Management Conferences. It is hard to think of a reason, short of health concerns, for you not to attend GAWDA's meetings, including the reasons below:

• Schedule conflict: The meeting locations/dates are determined and publicized at least one year in advance, often sooner. Your dentist will understand and your spouse may rather spend his/her anniversary in San Francisco than at home.
• Family obligations: Bring them with you. GAWDA is one big family; the President's Gala is the best family reunion of the year.
• Expense/time: You cannot afford not to come to the meeting. What would it cost you in terms of money and time to meet with all your distributor and supplier partners? For the price of a meeting registration, a plane ticket and a hotel, you can meet them all in one place over four days. That is real value.
• I don't make new contacts: Step out of your booth, greet a first-timer (look for the ribbons), sit at a table with people you do not know...
• Location: San Francisco, Bahamas, Hawaii—where would you rather be?
• No hotel rooms: Granted, the Westin and the Grand Hyatt sold out faster than a Jimmy Buffett concert.
• Death: OK, you got me there.

A lot of time, thought and energy goes into planning every meeting. Each year, the incoming president selects a Planning Committee of distributor and supplier members to help plan the SMC and Annual Convention. They review the surveys members completed about previous meetings (50 percent liked everything and 50 percent didn't like anything), past agendas, current events and hot industry topics. From this information, they develop a list of presentations and workshops that should be of interest to members. For the convention, they also visit the hotel, meet with possible Gives Back recipients, tour potential Gala locations and determine the overall theme of the meeting.

Recent Planning Committees have experimented by varying the schedule and the format. The SMC was shortened to save time out of the office. The Contact Booth Program and President's Reception were combined to reduce cost and hopefully keep people in the room longer. A golf tournament was added because members wanted more optional networking opportunities. We also decided to use more of our own industry experts to discuss best practices. For the Annual Convention, the committee wanted to provide more free time to see the sights of San Francisco. We also added a workshop for the Young Executives and a separate networking activity.

Now let's talk about the dirtiest word in the meeting planning industry: attrition. In each hotel contract, we reserve a guaranteed number of rooms. Industry consolidation and a host of other variables make determining the correct number of rooms a crap shoot. In past years, GAWDA operated under the philosophy that we wanted to guarantee that every member, even those waiting until right before the convention, had a room. The result was large blocks of unused rooms that left GAWDA owing the hotel tens of thousands, even, in one instance, several hundred thousand dollars. GAWDA then negotiated a reduction in the amount owed, in return for contracting to return to the same hotel in the near future—for example, the Swan and Dolphin in Orlando.

Our goal during the past year was to break this cycle and return GAWDA to the position of being free to choose convention locations and make a profit on the meetings. I am glad to report that we have been successful, but admittedly may have cut a little too close to the bone in San Francisco.

No excuses. I look forward to seeing you ALL at the 63rd Annual Convention in San Francisco—unless, of course, you're passing through the pearly gates!