Hotel Liaison

Hotel Liaison is the function of presenting an abstraction of the convention committee to the facilities the convention will use. This abstraction avoids conflicting data that might arise by using multiple channels, and prevents conflict between the committee and the hotel by allowing the organization to select a spokesman or spokesmen who can present their interests calmly and knowledgeably. Typically each facility will also select a single point of contact from management or the sales or catering department, and most interaction between the hotel and the convention will occur between these two people. The hotel or the convention may choose to make other staffers available directly, especially for technical topics, but this should be under the control of the hotel liaison.

Contract

Contract negotiation

If a hotel asks for a cancellation clause, ask for it to be mutual. If negotiating with multiple facilities ensure that cancellation by one facility will not leave the convention owing a cancellation penalty to another one.

Attrition clauses are the death of conventions.

It's nice to have a contract before the convention begins selling memberships. But an option, or even a handshake, may suffice depending on the relationship with the hotel.

Contract enforcement

Your goal is not a rigid enforcement of the contract. Your goal is for the convention and its members to get what they need at a price that fits in their budgets, and secondarily for the facility to be happy enough to want you back. Hotels double-book space all the time and may be willing to give you something compelling in exchange for giving up what's in your contract. They make promises on behalf of their departments that the departments can't deliver but are often willing to give you things that you're not entitled to if you ask nicely and they know you've been accommodating elsewhere.

Rooming

Blocking

Once the contract is signed, getting reservations open is the first order of business. You will need to set up room blocks. If you have any control over placement at all, you will want to have some distinction between "party" and "quiet" areas. You may need additional blocks in order to accommodate convention functions, kosher/shabbat rooms, handicap access, smoking, and suites. Chances are good that the first step is to get a room map from the hotel. Beware: Most such room maps are at least slightly inaccurate.

Room assignment

Assigning particular rooms is a nice touch, and it's often the only way to guarantee things like requests for connecting rooms. But it's a lot of work.

Program of Events

Room setups use a lot of labor and hotels will be more able to perform them correctly if given enough time to schedule their part-time staff appropriately. Ideally the hotel should be given at least six week's notice of the general shape of room setups including any major room turns that have to happen quickly, and at least two week's notice of the specifics so they can enter them into their scheduling systems. Don't deliver this document too early, though, or it will be fiction.

Resume

Try to tie every hotel detail that's not a guest room or a function room into a single place, for easy reference.

Tiedown

Typically, the facility will want to have a meeting or meetings a week or two before the event. These meetings serve two purposes: first, to introduce all the hotel's department heads to the people who will have authority to sign on the master bill, and second, to take care of any unresolved details. Sometimes you will discover that your hotel had an entire category of details that they expected to work out with you, and even if that's not the case the department heads typically only stay for the first few minutes, with only the hotel's contact and one or two other people staying behind for the rest of the meeting. For this reason it's important for the convention staff attending this meeting to be prompt, and for people not authorized to sign on the master bill not to attend.

Make sure you take notes about the hotel staff at this meeting; you will need their names later to provide feedback (and tips or gifts) for the hotel. A staff list is also useful, though not absolutely necessary.

Ideally, the Pocket Program will have gone to press by this meeting. Give the hotel a copy, if possible.

Runtime

"Plans are useless, but planning is essential" -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

At runtime, hotel will be mostly reactive rather than proactive. Choose staff who can resolve issues quickly. Don't try to use technology to keep track of runtime issues; a whiteboard or clipboard is fine.

Tip early and often. A tip budget of at least 25 cents per convention attendee is critical. Housemen who know to expect tips from you won't lollygag when they see you around, and they may be motivated to come up with creative solutions to problems the convention may have. Tipping in $2 bills is fun because it makes it more clear that the tip is coming from the con and not any mundane guests who may also be present.

Have a staff of people you trust to be the face of the convention to the hotel at con. Ops will need to know your duty schedule. Covering late night hours as on-call is fine so long as the hotel isn't scheduled to do any critical room changes during those hours, or if you have someone else (like the department that requires the room change) who will be around to verify its correctness and tip the housemen for you.

Most hotels distribute tokens (called "frogs" by meeting planners, because they make hotel staff jump) for the master bill signers. Hotels also typically

Hotels often distribute a Nextel or the like to use to contact them. If you can only have one it should go to the duty hotel liaison. Having one for the primary liaison and one for the duty con chair is a good idea. Having one for ops should only be done if you are clear what they are to use it for. Ops will benefit from being able to hear the traffic and from being able to resolve problems if no one else is reachable, but they're unlikely to be the calm face the convention would like to present.

Give the hotel other runtime contact info for you, your team, and Ops, in case they can't get you on the Nextel. Consider giving them contact info for the Con Chair, or telling them where and when your at-con operational meetings so they can bring any pressing concerns there. Hopefully they won't need any of this.

Invite the hotel to the Gripe Session(s). Make sure that hotel issues are brought up first so your rep can go back to doing their job without having to hear about the non-hotel gripes.

Most hotel departments are good at going through the liaison. Some, particularly security, may not be used to having a qualified counterpart team and may need encouragement to bring their issues to the convention.

Billing

Schedule the Master Bill reconciliation as early as possible, and pay in cash or equivalent. That way the hotel is less likely to bill you for small things they notice later.