From ASAE: “The American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) has announced it will honor Colin Rorrie Jr., PhD, CAE, President and CEO, Meeting Professionals International (MPI), with its 2004 Key Award, and George Aguel, Senior Vice President, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, with its 2004 Academy of Leaders Award. Both awards will be presented in ceremonies during ASAE’s 2004 Annual Meeting and Exposition August 14-17 in Minneapolis, MN.”

That’s what David Shaw over at B or not 2B wants to know:

Many trade shows have to deal with the problem of the "last day." The
problem: how do you keep the exhibit floor from becoming a ghost town
in the final hours as people hit the airport to get home?

He wonders if putting the best content last can help. It sure doesn’t hurt, but in my  experience, it still doesn’t totally solve the exodus problem. Do you have any advice to share with him? If so, drop it in the comments here or click here to comment on B or Not 2B.

This is cool–I just played 20 questions with an artificial intelligence computer that continues to learn as more people play with it. I was thinking of a picture frame, and AI actually got it. I never in a million years would have guessed "picture frame" out of the clues it had. Big fun; go play. I have to think of something more challenging now, since it obviously has the basics down. Maybe I’ll try "feather duster."

And in case you’re wondering why I am publicly announcing my goofing off today, it’s because I officially got off work at 1, so I’m actually goofing around on my own time.

Thanks to my friend and Capsules coblogger Anne Taylor-Vaisey, I just spent half an hour playing this game!  It gives you 20 images  from a Google image search, and you have 20 seconds to guess what keyword might have brought them up.  Totally addictive!

I love conference centers (such excellent learning environments), so I was glad to hear that the conference center biz is finally turning around. After three years in slump city, in 2004 revenues and profits started heading upward again, and hopes are high for a continuation of the trend this year, according to the recently released 2005 edition of Trends in the Conference Center
Industry, published by PKF Consulting in conjunction with the
International Association of Conference Centers.

“As a whole, our Trends in the Conference Center Industry sample enjoyed a
healthy 7.5 percent increase in total revenue in 2004,” said David Arnold,
eastern regional chief executive officer of PKF-C. “Operating under fairly
austere conditions after three years of declining revenue, center managers were
able to convert the gain in revenue into a 25.3 percent boost to the bottom-line
in 2004.”

“The best news is that conference center managers appear to be even more
optimistic about 2005,” Arnold noted. The conference centers in the survey
sample have budgeted for an average increase in occupancy of nine percent in
2005, matched by a 4.0 percent increase in package pricing. For conference
centers, most business is sold in packages that include accommodations, meals,
and conference services.

The rise in demand is coming mainly from business and academic groups’ training and continuing education activities.

P.S. Something that made me grind my teeth this morning: One of the other meetings industry publications confused "conference center" with "convention center" in a brief e-writeup I received today about this survey. They even hinted that this is a sign that all the recent controversy around all the convention center building–some say overbuilding–is overblown. Please feel free to join me in a heartfelt aaaargh!

When reading a review of the U2 concert held in Boston Tuesday night in The Boston Globe, I started waxing nostalgic over the first time I saw the band back in the early ’80s at Trinity College’s spring fling. At the time, I was more interested in our ultimate frisbee game than the guy running up and down the stage and scaffolding–little did I know what U2 would turn into. But what really made me feel old was this bit:

In an evening full of highlights, a standout moment came with the timeless ballad "One," during which thousands in the audience illuminated their cellphones; soon, the arena resembled the starriest of nights.

Cellphones? That just sounded so surreal to me–whatever happened to holding up a lighter until your fingers start burning? I guess using cellphones reduces the fire hazard, but it just isn’t the same…

I just found a very interesting new blog, rsputt.blogspot.com, written by the staff of a full-service hotel and restaurant consulting company. If you want the inside skinny on restaurants in the British and American Virgin Islands, that’s what they’re talking about now. I know I’ll be checking back soon to see what hot culinary spots they recommend for our next sailing vacation down in the BVI.

As we were chatting about fees, surcharges, and customer service issues on today’s MeetingsRadio show this morning (the archive is still up, if you want to go have a listen), host Bill Wulff came up with a really interesting idea on how to get better service from your meeting’s hotel.

He said that a few years ago, he asked hotels to sign an agreement where the final room-rate price would be determined by the service levels received. Say, if 90 percent of attendees who fill out a form on the hotel’s service levels at the meetings end said it rated at a certain level, he’d pay $5 more per room per night than the agreed-upon rate. If the hotel’s services rated below a certain level, he’d pay $5 less per room per night. So if the base rate was $125, a hotel that scored well on service would get $130, and a hotel that didn’t rate too well would get $120. He said he got a couple of hotels to actually agree to do this, and he ended up paying one of them the extra money because they did such a good job.

I like this idea a lot more than the "mandatory gratuities" and service charges that get tacked on now, whether the service received deserves it or not. As I mentioned on the show, making tipping "mandatory" (I know, it’s an oxymoron like giant shrimp) actually can hurt service levels by taking away the financial incentive to do an exemplary job. As someone who waited tables and bartended for a living during her wild and wooly days, trust me, tips do make a difference in how service workers behave toward you. (An aside I learned while writing an article on tipping a while back: Tip housekeeping every day, not as a jackpot at the end of your trip, since a different person may be doing your room each day.)

Anyway, it was interesting to go on the radio, and horrifying to hear my voice when I listened to the playback. Do I really sound like that?? But Dave McCann, Rob Carey (both of Meeting News fame), Bill, and I had a good discussion, mainly about fees, surcharges, and the like. And I got a "that one’s a keeper" comment from Bill when I mentioned my mantra when it comes to this stuff: Have a clause in the contract that says that no additional fees, surcharges, etc., will be applied other than those disclosed to and agreed to by the planner in the contract. I also suggested that planners get together a checklist of every possible surcharge/fee/gratuity scenario they have heard about or can think of, and have the hotel check off each and every item, and add any additional items at the end. You can’t negotiate out what you don’t know exists, so informed is armed when it comes to this stuff.

Back to wading through my hundreds of e-mails that accummulated since this morning…

Check out WebFlyer.com, a site that has a mileage converter, blackout calendar, special deals and promotions, and all kinds of other goodies for the frequent air traveler.

(via the MIMList)

I can hear people in wheelchairs in Hartford, Conn., applauding all the way up here in Massachusetts–yesterday, I posted about how the new Marriott in town was resisting making its bathrooms comply with state codes to keep them handicap-accessible. An update, from today’s Hartford Courant:

The developer of the new Marriott hotel at Adriaen’s Landing must
redesign bathrooms in 17 nearly completed handicapped-accessible rooms
to meet state code and ensure that people in wheelchairs are able to
use the toilets, a state panel ruled Tuesday morning.

"We’ve
got an oops on the table here and I think that … the goal here is to
remedy the situation that brought us to the hearing today," said John
Butkus, chairman of the codes and standards committee of the Department
of Public Safety, in reference to the design flaw that caused the
compliance issue. "The gold standard is the state building code."

Someday, I’d like to rent a wheelchair for 24 hours and try to negotiate a convention, hotel, etc., just to see for myself what it’s like. If we all did that (including those who build hotels, convention centers, etc.), problems like this would probably become very, very rare.