Mrs. Helen Fischer, Executive Secretary, has been asked by the Arrangements Committee to report in the Newsletter some problems that occurred at the Annual meeting in Florida, and may occur again, concerning hotel arrangements

Mrs. Fischer writes: “Arrangements for meetings are made now somewhere between 5 to 8 years in advance of the meetings.

“One can only offer educated guesses to hotels concerning number attending, program format, etc. for so many years in advance. In general our policy is to protect the Association and the registrants as much as possible; we request that fairly large numbers of private rooms be blocked for the Association for the period and that almost all public space be set aside. However, during the 5 to 8 year period, other business comes to the hotel, and their salesmen are cognizant of the fact that we have requested probably more than we will need and accordingly begin to book other events, banking on a percentage of cancellations.

“As a result the hotel is sometimes overbooked and we find that our registrants cannot stay over extra days or cannot be accommodated earlier, or that the meeting areas leave much to be desired. We can only anticipate that this may happen and try to sew things up in advance as tightly as possible. On the other hand, we do like to be fair in dealing with the hotels in which we meet; in the event we have asked for more space than it turns out we will really need, we like to release it as soon as possible. In general, this policy has been of benefit and the hotels find cooperation is a two way street.”