Don’t let what happened to Bally’s in Las Vegas happen at your meeting–according to this article in the Las Vegas Sun, the sterno can under a coffee pot in a meeting room caused a fire that resulted in $500 in damages to the room, and an evacuation of the hotel guests.

What precautions does your hotel take to ensure that this won’t happen at your meeting?

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According to this press release, planners are less likely than they used to be to select sites by visiting sites, distributing RFPs and signing contracts. “Three years of economic downturn put the brakes on corporate travel in 2000 but this year, when meeting planners forecast a four percent budget increase (MPI FutureWatch 2004 survey), the booking environment has changed. Face-to-face conference sales are fast being replaced by Internet-based decisions as meeting planners move their group business to the Internet.”

One example they use is IBM, which has placed stringent restrictions on employee travel and off-site functions, and cut its conference planning teams by 50 percent since 2002. Companies are starting to look at outsourcing event bidding, turning to companies like Conferon and HelmsBriscoe which use Internet technology to distribute RFPs and automate group reservations. “Other corporations continue to manage their conference planning in-house but are partnering with online group event specialists for greater efficiency. Additionally, some buying companies now regard off-site meetings as a procurement item requiring a number of standardized bids from prospective conference properties before they fund the activity, which is driving even more planners to online RFP distribution companies.”

The press release offers a look at how some venues are coping with the brave new world. Hoteliers, how are you addressing the increasing Internet-based conference sales trend?

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Casinos in Las Vegas now can relate to how cruiselines feel when the media plays up a shipboard illness. According to this article from The Miami Herald, nasty gastro-intestinal illnesses have jumped ship and now are plaguing the Strip.

According to the article, one casino had an outbreak big enough to catch the eye of the Centers for Disease Control—1,660 complaints over a four-month period. The CDC told the venue, the California Hotel and Casino, to make sure its dice, chips, and coins were ship-shape in terms of sanitization practices, since these much-handled items usually spread these viruses.

But why wait until you have a problem? I’d say it would be good practice to make sure all items that are handled by many people—from bathroom doors to in-room remote controls—should be sanitized regularly. And it also wouldn’t hurt to remind both employees and guests to wash their hands regularly, just like Mom always told us to.

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When stuck with explaining the vagaries of low-flow toilets required by the Clayton, Mo., building codes to its guests, the Clayton on the Park hotel tried to keep a sense of humor.

General Manager Micarl Hill says in a press release, “It’s a sensitive subject both for our guests and our employees, especially our engineering staff,” explains Hill…Hill won’t say the low-flow toilet problem had become epidemic in his hotel but they were having so many guest calls that they nicknamed them “Code 10s.”

“We had no choice but to educate our hotel guests to flush often,” he said. “It was either that or put plungers in all the bathrooms and that was not a realistic option in a luxury all-suite hotel.” So he designed the message:

And it worked—they cut “Code 10s” by 78 percent in the first 30 days of implementing the card program in January of 2004 and reduced them by 76 percent for the whole first quarter of 2004.

Hey, it’s Friday. What do you expect, War and Peace?

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