While it has been about twenty years since I have personally been involved with helping to choose a convention site, I have a point or two to make. It is true, as others have said, that a convention like ours is possible in part because of the rooms that are rented for it. Many of you have experience with other convention groups that do things very different from PTG. One of the most unusual features of the PTG Convention is the large number of classrooms needed along with a large, secure area for exhibits along with numerous large function rooms for Council, concerts, and receptions. Some of you have mentioned other hotels you are familiar with in Las Vegas; you wonder why we don't meet there. Without knowing the particulars of those hotels, I would bet that very few would be able to finds all of the spaces we need. While I was involved with this process, we had many requests for different cities. Most of them we dismissed very quickly because there was no single property that could accommodate those needs. We have looked at university settings. Some universities have wonderful convention facilities, but still don't work well for us. One reason is the advanced age of many of our active membership. They cannot trek across campus like they once did. We firm up our deals with the convention hotels several years in advance. When the economy is poor, the deals struck years before don't seem so good. Sometimes, but not always, we can renegotiate prices. (An important part of any negotiation with a convention site is the number of rooms that were paid for at recent PTG Conventions). Three or four years from now the hotels will probably look better to us, and the economy is a big reason why. When a destination is very popular or the economy is going gangbusters, Expedia and the like cannot get many good deals. I look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas in June and I will be at the Bally's on the PTG plan. I know that not everyone can afford to go (even though I also know you really can't afford not to), or to stay in the convention hotel. Those of us who can should to support PTG and our profession. See you there! Bruce Dornfeld, RPT <mailto:bdornfeld at earthlink.net> bdornfeld at earthlink.net North Shore Chapter -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100323/4474bdd6/attachment.htm>
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