National Speakers Association
Mr. Stacy Tetschner, Executive Vice President
stacy@nsaspeaker.org

A Message from the NSA President:

I want to bring to your attention a major issue that has affected NSA this past year, and is affecting the whole meetings, conventions and exhibitions industry. It's called attrition.

When an association or corporation books a meeting at a hotel, they negotiate a rate for guest rooms, and a rate for food and beverage. The group agrees to book a certain number of guest room nights in exchange for the services provided by the hotel. If the group fails to use enough of those guest room nights, it is billed for those guest rooms not used.

Last year NSA faced this issue--big time. After the Convention, NSA received a bill from the hotel for $70,000 in attrition because so many of our members booked guest rooms outside of the NSA guest room block, or decided to stay in other hotels. Our Executive Vice President, Stacy Tetschner, was able to negotiate the fee down to $20,000 by agreeing to hold another meeting in that hotel within the next five years.

NSA's approach in the past has been to put together the best-value package for its members--combining guest room rates, food and beverage and all of the meeting space we use in the hotel. We sign a contract with a convention hotel three to five years in advance. We negotiate the best deal we can at the time. In the past, that has worked well, but when conditions change (such as the downturn in the hospitality industry and the commoditization of travel over the Internet) it can cause a problem.

As a result of our experience last year and the year before, Stacy, Mark Sanborn, Scott Friedman and I met face-to-face. We decided to change our policy for future meetings. NSA will negotiate the lowest hotel guest room rate for our members, excluding all food and beverage, meeting room space and other amenities offered by the hotel. NSA has to pay for these services, and the costs will be rolled into the registration fees. You can expect to see your hotel guest room rates go down in the future; however, registration fees will go up.

Unfortunately for NSA, the new policy cannot be implemented until the existing hotel contracts are finished in three years. In the meantime, if NSA’s attendees continue to book guest rooms outside of our guest room block and NSA is forced to pay attrition fees to hotels, it will be necessary to raise the registration rates before the guest room rates are lowered.

I can certainly understand your interest in saving money on your hotel guest rooms. However, I think it's important to look at the whole picture. The quality and value our meetings provide is made possible by the package deals that NSA has negotiated with hotels.

One person I spoke with quoted Spiderman and said, "I missed the part where that's my problem." The problem belongs to all of us because it's our Association. We need to work together to find a solution that provides the best overall value for our members. Then we can focus on working together to advance the art and value of experts who speak professionally.

Best regards,

Stephen Tweed
2002-2003 NSA President

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