<HTML>In a message dated 3/13/03 5:33:13 PM Central Standard= Time, Pianorebuilding@aol.com writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT= : 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Don't know where you're coming = from.  The PTG, by their own admission has not been getting deals by taking the worst booking dates of the year.  Nola= n printed it in one of his messages.  At Reno, techs were getting 40% low= er room rates walking in off the street and not letting the hotel know they wer= e PTG.  The PTG registrants paid more.  In July, Vegas and Reno prac= tically give hotel rooms away to get the business.  The PTG got the royal runar= ound in Chicago.  Do you remember the Yamaha party room was cut in half just= prior to the event so it could be rented to a wedding party.  Yamaha spent al= l that money and we were crammed in there like sardines.  We didn't get any de= al in Chicago.  Now, those are facts.  We shouldn't be arguing about fac= ts. It's easy to blame everything on the prior boards and presidents.  The = last several boards have done that.  We elected the currrent group to correc= t problems, not make them worse.  Loyalty to the PTG is great.  We a= ll need to support our own organization.  But blind loyalty is another matter, and= we certainly shouldn't be enabling the kind of decisions that are making it <BR= > harder for some of us to attend, and turning off the support of our supplier= s and exhibitors.  Still haven't heard any defense for that. Bill </BLOCKQUOTE> Bill You really don't have any idea of what your talking about. The PTG signs a c= ontract for how much space it needs, and what the room rates will be. The ho= tel has to stick to the contract as much as the PTG does. But hotels have a = lot more leverage than the PTG. One thing you have to understand, we are a v= ery small organization, compared to other groups that come into a hotel. Bec= ause of the way we operate, we demand all of the meeting rooms, but we do no= t occupy all the sleeping rooms. So while we want a lot, we don't give much = in return. So if the hotel can sell space to someone with more money, they'l= l do it. The PTG got screwed in Reno. And we got doubly screwed in Chicago. But you t= hink we just let that happen without saying anything? You have no idea what = the Board and the institute committee did behind the scenes to get things re= solved. We did get some concessions, by not being charged for some things we= should have paid for. But that didn't help the space problems at the time. = The hotel basically put it to us, BIG TIME. But it would have been much wors= e if Alan and Nolan hadn't worked very hard to get what we did. And for what= it's worth, something else you probably don't know, is that the hotel in Ch= icago and Dallas are owned by the same firm. We (The Board and the home offi= ce), tried VERY HARD, to work out some sort of deal to get Dallas to change = the dates, as compensation for screwing us in Chicago. All we could do is tr= y. But the hotel decided we weren't big time enough to cave in to our demand= s. I would suggest that before you complain more, that you volunteer to run a w= eekend seminar for your chapter. Then maybe you'll have a little more respec= t for the people who work behind the scenes, and the PTG. Wim </HTML>