Here's the skinny. In the past we have made the hotel info readily available. This has always backfired on us. The reason being that we have to guarantee so many room nights at the hotel in order to take over the entire parking lot, get a better rack rate, function space, and so on. We try to fill the entire hotel with VRCC folks exclusively. So what happens when the hotel is named we will say Bob gets all excited about going and calls the hotel and reserves five rooms for himself and his friends. Pretty cool huh. At this point all Bob has done is soak up five rooms for the week and has not yet registered for the event. As the hotel sells out we have our other members registering at the overflow hotel. As the date nears Bobs wife tells him that he will be going to her office picnic instead of Inzane. Bobs friends can't get off of work and the whole cool idea goes in the toilet. In the mean time we have folks staying down the street because the hotel is booked. So a few days before the event Bob calls the hotel and cancels the rooms. Now we have folks down the street and a group of golfers or such taking the rooms that Bob cancelled. Not cool. Remember that unless it is our people occupying those rooms they do not count towards the number of room nights that we guaranteed to fill. At this point the VRCC has to pay the penalty and Bob and his buddy's are off the hook and didn't even realize that they have put the club and it's members staying across the street into this problem. Now some of you will say how often could something like this happen? I just used this as one scenario. I don't really know all of the reasons that people cancel at the last minute but it really doesn't matter the reason. The fact is that it puts the VRCC staff into a very bad situation. Imagine 20-30 rooms cancelled at the last minute. It adds up fast. We do not charge dues to belong to this club and real only have Inzane to fund the club for the next year. We have to do all that we can to keep from paying the penalties. Keeping the hotel info hidden until you have at least committed enough to register is one way that we try to avoid this problem. It has nothing to do with secrecy. I hope this helps to explain our predicament. By the way those that find a small mom and pop down the street to save a couple of bucks also end up hurting the club. If we don't sell out the entire hotel we have to pay up. I can't express it enough. Ground Zero is the place to be. It keeps the club from paying the penalties and also that is where the action is. We go to great lengths to find a place to hold this event. It's not easy to put this together and to have to pay out in the end is a less than desirable out come. I understand that registering for the event will not stop all cancellations but it does show at least some level of commitment. Thank you for your understanding.
