Wayne Delawter's
Reunion Planning

C-7A CARIBOU ASSOCIATION

Reunion Planning

Planning Reunions

We have learned that the application of good business principles to planning reunions are what is needed to pull off a reunion in a way that gives us good value. It certainly is a business for the hotels, the entertainment and attraction vendors. If we aren’t familiar with the terms and standards of the industry and the leverage of our group, we are apt to not get good deals.
Four of our members, Jim Collier, Wayne DeLawter, Huey Frye, and Bob Markham have attended several event planner training seminars that are specifically geared to military reunion groups. There is no doubt to us that this training better equips us to plan, protect, and negotiate our events. The professional trainers stress planning at least 2 years in advance, considering more than one city or area, considering several hotels and attractions in each area, and always do personal site surveys.
To bring quality reunions we have made numerous changes in reunion cities, hotels, and attractions in the last several years of planning. On average it takes about 4 months of coordination and negotiation to decide on the best city and hotel from which to begin building the details of our reunion.
We have found that some of the advertisement material misrepresents the quality and even the layout and square footage of rooms, so the site surveys are really important. This requires us as planners to actually go to the hotels and attractions and see for ourselves exactly what the facilities are about. For the 2006 reunion my wife and I spent 3 different nights in 3 different hotels in 2 different towns as we did 5 hotel and 5 attraction site surveys. We met with the businesses group sales representatives at each place, so you can imagine how busy these days were. The hotel that I had thought would be the best for us turned out to be the worst and the opposite was true about the one that we chose.

 Site surveys are essential

We always must deal with vendor and facility contracts. Since learning how to protect and negotiate for our reunions, we have never accepted the initial hotel or vendor contract as originally proposed. Contracts are primarily written only for the protection of that business, and they are geared to dealing with commercial business groups, which we are not. We always request changes to those contracts to provide protection for our Association. About 80% of the businesses accept all our requested changes. If they don’t agree with those changes, we walk away and go with someone else.
The majority of contract modification involves attrition clauses, cancellation clauses, price adjustment, space requirement, and banquet issues.

Attrition Clauses

The removal or modification of attrition clauses that commercial businesses can accept because they can guarantee the number of attendees is paramount to groups like ours. To do otherwise sets us up for major financial losses. While our number of reunion attendees seems fairly stable, this is an all-volunteer force. We can’t draft you like the Army did for Vietnam, and we just can’t guarantee the numbers. Most attrition clauses require a large penalty if we don’t accurately estimate the number of attendees that will come to a reunion that may be 2 or more years away. Most attrition clauses state that if we estimate that we will occupy 300 hotel rooms at $100 a night per room and the turnout occupies only 100 rooms then our Association must pay $20,000 – the revenue that they would have received from the 200 unfilled rooms. Yet if we block only a 100 rooms, but many more than that want to come, they probably won’t be able to get a room. As you can see, elimination of the attrition clause is important for us.

Cancellation Clauses

Cancellation clauses are typically written only to benefit hotel or vendor. We always require incorporation of a reciprocal cancellation agreement that provides the Association reasonable protection.
The cost of the attractions or hotel rooms is something that we look at in terms of value. We always keep an eye to keeping all costs as low as possible to keep the reunions within the financial reach of everyone. We assure that our rates and costs are commensurate with what we bring to the business. What we have found is that we only get what we ask for, but at the same time we must understand that the business must make a reasonable profit. For example, if we aren’t completely filling the hotel, we can’t assume that we will get meeting rooms without charge. Either the guest room will increase, or the Association will pay a meeting/hospitality/banquet room and equipment charge.
There are many other complex issues that we work on that we won’t go into here. Some of these are compliance with local food and beverage laws; determining the banquet and reception menus/service and layout; scheduling/reserving meeting rooms; and ground and airline transportation.

The important thing about military reunion planning is to consider the desires of our membership. By applying the above principles, while assuring there are venues of interest for our spouses as well as for ourselves, we have the ingredients for a good time. Your inputs about the changes that you would like are always welcomed.