THE MAIN EVENT Oh, Won’t You Stay? Y Staying at the official convention hotel benefits you and the association in some surprising ways. ou probably already knew that you get great rates (likely among the lowest you’ll find) when you stay at a convention’s official hotel — whether it’s the annual SAF- ETECH event, or the upcoming 58th Annual ALOA Convention & Security Expo, taking place July 19-26, 2014, in New Orleans, LA. And, of course, you get the convenience of staying in a hotel that’s just within a stone’s throw of the convention. But there’s yet another great thing that happens when you stay at the official hotel: You help ALOA SPAI keep expenses down — which, in turn, can translate to lower convention costs and annual dues for as- sociation members. How it Works When we’re planning a convention, we con- tract rooms at a hotel — an official conven- tion hotel, if you will — at a discounted rate on behalf of our members. The hotel gives us these lower rates in exchange for us book- ing a fairly large number of rooms, called a room block. It’s a great situation for the hotel, the asso- ciation and our members — unless all of our contracted room block isn’t used. When that happens, ALOA must pay a substantial fee. Simply put, if any rooms in our room block are leſt unreserved by ALOA members, the association has to pay for them. For example, if we had a block of 100 rooms, and 75 were reserved, ALOA would have to foot the bill for the remaining 25 rooms. Won’t You Let Us Take You on a Sea Cruise? Set sail with us and savor the New Or- leans skyline aboard the Dinner Cruise on the Creole Queen on Friday, July 25, at 7 p.m. Relax, enjoy the casual buffet prepared fresh on board, and listen to live New Orleans jazz as you cruise the Mighty Mississippi. Reservations recom- mended. Visit www.creolequeen.com. Tickets are $70. Other Advantages Besides avoiding the heſty penalty for unre- served rooms, there are other great reasons for association members to book their rooms at the convention hotel. For one, we’re able to monitor attendance through our room block, which in turn helps us better plan and submit accurate event counts — all of which helps keep costs down. What’s more, our association’s value to a city is measured by a ratio between the total number of sleeping rooms booked inside our room block and the amount of conven- tion center space required. By booking at 12 KEYNOTES MAY 2014 Hilton New Orleans Riverside p maintain our strong business value, which is crucial to our negotiations with cities and cost-containment efforts. Let’s Do It So what are you waiting for? Online regis- tration for the ALOA Convention & Secu- rity Expo is now open, so visit www.aloa. org and sign up for the convention today. And while you’re at it, go ahead and reserve your room at the convention’s official hotel, the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, by call- ing (504) 561-0500. The ALOA rate is $149 single/double plus tax. To receive the dis- counted ALOA hotel rates, identify yourself as an ALOA attendee. The cut-off date is June 17, 2014. Any res- ervations made aſter this date or aſter the room block is filled are not guaranteed at the ALOA rate. WWW.ALOA.ORG
