And so they begin. The Specialty Graphic Imaging Association cancelled its 2005
(9/28 - 10/1) meeting in New Orleans. There were 11,000-plus attendees expected. They tried to
move it to Atlanta but decided against it. The CEO/president says in the press release:

“SGIA ‘05 in New Orleans was well on its way to being the best SGIA Convention in recent memory. The quality and quantity of exhibitors and attendees was staggering. In moving to Atlanta, as we discussed, we faced the challenge of delivering the same level of value to attendees and exhibitors without the luxury of the time needed to accomplish the goal.”

Sad, sad, sad. But hardly unexpected.

According to this Washington Post article, New Orleans meeting organizers are turning their eyes toward Atlanta to rebook their meeting, if need be. Which isn’t too suprising.

What does surprise me is that Heywood Sanders has popped up in at least three of the articles I’ve read on New Orleans and conventions, post-hurricane. This time he’s saying that the damage will hurt NOLA in its ability to compete for conventions in the future, due to what he says is an oversupply of convention centers. Well, there may be a lot of centers, but not a lot as big as New Orleans’. Plus, it just bugs me that he’s saying this kind of thing as the city drowns.

Assuming (and I acknowledge it’s a big assumption) that NOLA comes back strong after however long it’ll take to clean up, rebuild, and repopulate, I don’t think this hurricane will deter too many from seeing it as a great meeting destination. Disaster can strike anywhere, anytime, and the fact that nothing of this magnitude has happened before should work in its favor.

Plus, I just love that city. I want to see it back to its old bons temps rouler self again. Don’t know if it can, but this dancing on its (presumed) grave is awful.

Here’s the latest on some hotels in the Katrina-damaged areas, gleaned from various Web sites:

Chateau Sonesta Hotel (New Orleans): Sustained minimal damage; hotel will remain closed through at least Sept. 8.

Fairmont New Orleans: Arrivals temporarily suspended. No reports on damage.

Hilton Hotels Corp.: No major structural damage reported to its hotels in Katrina’s path; some hotels have reported water leaks, broken windows and minor stucco damage in various areas. Meanwhile, there currently are at least 16 Hilton-branded hotels accommodating guests but not accepting new arrivals through Sept. 1 — 10 in Louisiana (four in New Orleans) and six in Mississippi — while hotels in Alabama are not taking new arrivals until at least Sept. 1. In addition, Hilton evacuated 18 hotels prior to the storm, including 13 in Louisiana, three in Alabama and two in Mississippi.

InterContinental Hotels Group: All brand hotels in the city of New Orleans are closed for arrivals pending the lifting of evacuation orders and upon assessment of the storm’s effect on the hotels. No official damage reports.

Loews New Orleans: Currently closed. Property sustained minimal damage and will be fully operational once the State of Emergency ends and minor repairs are completed.

Marriott International: Marriott’s 14 hotels in New Orleans remain closed and unable to accept reservations; the resorts will remain closed until local authorities advise they may reopen or damage assessments say otherwise. In addition, two hotels in Alabama and two hotels elsewhere in Louisiana are in evacuated areas and remain closed until further notice.

Royal Sonesta Hotel (New Orleans): Sustained minimal damage. Will begin accepting new arrivals Sept. 9; however, due to lack of power and availability of resources, return to normal operations may be pushed back.

Sheraton New Orleans Hotel: Closed through at least Sept. 4. No reports on damage.

Sheraton Suites Key West: Currently under renovations, however hotel services are fully operational.

W New Orleans and W New Orleans French Quarter: Closed through Sept. 5. No reports on damage.

Windsor Court Hotel (New Orleans): Hotel closed. Property sustained some damage, which included broken windows and rain damage.

I just spoke with Jim Sliwa, media relations manager with ICAAC organizer the American Society for Microbiology, and the conference will be moving from New Orleans to a new place and new dates (it was scheduled originally for Sept.).

Jim said, “We really wanted to stay in New Orleans—they’ll need the business—and it’s so much easier to handle the logistics if you don’t have to change locations. But we got the Washington, D.C., Convention Center very quickly—when you hear the dates, you’ll understand why: December 16 to 19. It’s similar to what happened right after 9/11/01, when ICAAC was in Chicago the week after the attacks. Luckily, the Chicago Convention Center could find dates that worked for us, but again they were the week before Christmas.”

“Now comes the fun—redoing the entire logistics for the convention center in three months,” Sliwa added. Deposits for New Orleans hotels will be refunded, and registration will automatically transfer to the new dates and site. Those who couldn’t attend the rescheduled ICAAC could get a full refund of registration fees and hotel deposits as long as they notified the organizers before September 23. ICAAC’s airline partner, United Airlines, also agreed to waive the $100 change fee for ICAAC attendees.

I have a feeling they’re going to be far from alone in having to move a meeting from NOLA and other affected areas. This is so horrible in so many ways.

Jena McGregor on the FC Now blog asks an interesting question: Where are the cruise ships in the Gulf Coast disaster? She says:

Maybe they’ve offered and I’ve missed it. Maybe it’s geographically or physically impossible to make it happen. But an offer from a cruise ship company to take the folks in the Superdome out into the Gulf of Mexico for a few days sounds like both a way to get thousands of people out of the misery of that area and — while I don’t mean this opportunistically in any way — a PR gold mine.

I’m guessing that it was a physical impossibility, what with a Category 5 storm in the area, to position ships nearby before or during the storm. And, as one commenter pointed out, they probably don’t have “spare” ships hanging around. Then again, if they can be brought in to house Superbowl overflow, now that the storm has cleared, they might be able to do something to help. But it would cost them a fortune to take the ships out of general circulation and feed everyone for free.

Then again, I hear the Astrodome is taking in refugees, and my guess is that now we’re just starting to see the waves of help arrive for those in hard-hit areas. I just hope that it lasts as long as people are going to need it—I’m hearing it could be anywhere from a month to a year before New Orleans is fully operational again, and the lack of info about Biloxi and other areas outside of NOLA is a worrisome.

Go read Patti Digh’s latest 37 Days. She so beautifully sums up what I’m feeling right now, and I suspect many of you are, too, about the horror show that used to be one of the more beautiful places in the U.S.: The Gulf Coast.

Then make a cash donation to the Red Cross. They need blood, too.

Starwood is listing updates on its hotels in Katrina-affected areas.

The Ritz-Carlton, New Orleans, where I spent a wonderful couple of days at an ICPA educational conference a few years back, has this posted on its Web site:

The Ritz-Carlton, New Orleans has been temporarily closed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. No decision can be made on a reopening date until the city of New Orleans is able to restore essential services to its residents, and permitting the assessment and repairs to the hotel – which were not major – to begin. Guests holding reservations will be contacted as soon as possible to assist with other arrangements or for future rebooking. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

And the one I’m working on now is one of them—contacting meeting organizers to find out what they’re doing with their close-in events in the Gulf Coast. With so much death and destruction, with floodwaters still rising in New Orleans, it almost seems obscene to talk about cancellation insurance, force majeure clauses, and all that. But, since our magazine goes out next week, I’m doing it.

What I’m hearing so far is a big wait and see, though I heard through the grapevine that the Hilton Riverwalk is working to move all its September meetings to other places and/or dates. Most planners can’t even contact their headquarters hotel, while others say their local contacts are fine, but they’ve been evacuated as far away as Texas and Indiana and don’t know much more than the rest of us are getting from the usual news sources.

Contrary to a report in USA Today, which said “the American Society of Anesthesiologists expects to go ahead with its convention scheduled Oct. 22 to 26,” an ASA spokeswoman said that no decision had been made as of yet about its 16,000-attendee meeting because the situation was still “tenuous and unsettled” at its New Orleans locale.

The Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, organized by the American Society for Microbiology and expected to draw 12,000 attendees to the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, is one of the few close-in meetings that plans to make the call now about whether or not they’re going to cancel their Sept. 21-24 meeting. The PR guy said he’d call to let me know this afternoon, but the smart money has to be on a cancellation or move. I’ll let you know when I hear.

My sister, who had been really looking forward to attending the Association of Pet Dog Trainers 12th Annual Educational Conference and Expo in New Orleans (she runs a most excellent doggy daycare, the The DogPlayce), is making new plans on the assumption that the program is cancelled—which it probably will be, but there’s nothing on their site that mentions anything at this point.

My colleague Mike Bassett has been working overtime on the Katrina damage updates. Here’s one good thing that is coming from so much bad, according to this article he wrote for today’s MeetingsNet Extra e-newsletter:

At 5 p.m. central time yesterday, the Dallas Convention and Visitor Bureau announced that 23 of its city’s hotel were offering reduced room rates for evacuees of the storm, and would extend those rates “as long as it will take for some communities to get utilities and other services in operation,” said Dallas CVB president/CEO Phillip Jones.

In addition, “the bureau is in constant contact with the Hotel Association of Greater Dallas and our member hotels, and we will continue to add their special rates throughout the week,” Jones said. “Our hotels are providing us with their week-by-week availability of room blocks and the Dallas Convention Center and Dallas Market Center are keeping us informed about their availability. We contacted American Airlines, which agreed to not assess destination change fees for group business relocating to Dallas due to Hurricane Katrina.

“In addition, we are actively responding to customer requests about availability and have contacted the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau to let our colleagues know that, where we share clients for meetings scheduled now through future years, we will accommodate them by switching our dates with theirs, based on availability, to enable the city to have adequate ramp-up time for their facilities to be fully functional,” Jones said in the statement. “All of us have friends or family throughout the affected states, and we want to offer our support. The hospitality industry is close–in good times and bad–and it is our intention to assist in whatever way we can.”

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, it looks like Star Trek-type teleportation is still in the realm of science fiction (shocking, I know). Military examines ‘beaming up’ data, people
Critics say its extreme computing, energy needs keep teleportation unlikely for now. From the article:

Now at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Austin, Texas, Davis reached both pessimistic and optimistic conclusions in his study. On one hand, he concluded that “Star Trek”-style teleportation faces enormous obstacles, partly because it would require the development of extraordinarily high-speed computers and would consume mind-boggling amounts of energy. Also, it would encounter all kinds of physics headaches generated by the principles of quantum physics…

However, Davis expressed great enthusiasm for research allegedly conducted by Chinese scientists who, he says, have conducted “psychic” experiments in which humans used mental powers to teleport matter through solid walls. He claims their research shows “gifted children were able to cause the apparent teleportation of small objects (radio micro-transmitters, photosensitive paper, mechanical watches, horseflies, other insects, etc.).”

If the Chinese experiments are valid and could be repeated by American scientists, Davis told The Chronicle in a phone interview Thursday, then, in principle, the military might some day develop a way to teleport soldiers and weapons. In principle, it could teleport “into a cave in Afghanistan and kill bin Laden instantly, or bring him back to justice.”

Davis’ study was released by the Air Force Research Lab in “The Air Force is to be applauded for investigating technologies that may have value for national security,” Kaku added. “But wormholes, negative energies, warped space-time, etc., require futuristic technologies centuries to millions of years ahead of ours. The only thing going down the wormhole is taxpayers’ money.”

But wouldn’t it be cool if, someday, we could all just say, “Beam me up, Scotty” and instantly be at a meeting site? It would sure make all those airport hassles a thing of the past. Then again, the Star Trek crew always did seem to have a lot of problems with that transporter…