I am asking that Admins by-pass ND and post it here, ita. ND received it a few times already, and, per post above, is busy enough right now with moving, etc. to not be in this thread working on organizing right now. It contains information that I spent some time compiling, that Kristin is asking for right now, that applies to the planning that's going on now, and if it is linked, voila - the info is there for the having

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Okay -- I'm not sure what was intended by attaching, so I'm just reposting it here:

INVITATION FOR BIDS
FOR ROOMS, HOSPITALITY SUITE & CATERING/BARTENDING
FOR FOURTH ANNUAL BUFFISTAS FACE TO FACE MEETING
Thursday, May 19 to Monday, May 23, 2005

Dear Hotel Sales Manager:

On behalf of the Buffistas, I invite you to submit bids for a long-weekend social event. The Buffistas are an Internet social group based on common interests in arts, literature, media, and popular culture. Once a year, we hold a "Face to Face" ("F2F") gathering to spend time with each other in person. 2005 will be our fourth annual Face to Face, this year, held in the Midwest.

Prior year's F2Fs were successful. We endeavor to find a hotel and location that can accommodate similar or improved set ups for rooms, a hospitality suite, and Saturday dance, bar and buffet. . Our set-up needs are described in more detail in Attachment A, Description of Requirements. Information on prior F2Fs is included in Attachment C. Suggestions are welcomed as well.

If you are interested in submitting a bid, please fill out and return the Bid Sheet, Attachment B. Please include tourist publications and maps that are usually made available to visitors plus any brochures or additional information with which you would to like supplement your bid. Mail, fax or deliver it to me at:

Name
Address
Fax.

If you have suggestions to change or improve our set-up while keeping our costs down, please include your ideas with your bid.

If you have any questions, please contact me at:

t Email
Home: X; Work Phone: X; Cell Phone: X

Thank you for your interest. I look forward to receiving your bid.

Sincerely,

Name
Attachments
C:\My Documents\Buffistas\F2F 05\F2F 05 RFP.rtf

ATTACHMENT A
DESCRIPTION OF REQUIREMENTS/NEEDS
FOURTH ANNUAL BUFFISTAS F2F, May 19 to 23, 2005

Special Needs:
· The rooms, hospitality suite, and dance locations must be wheelchair accessible and, of course, be able to be reached by elevator if on an upper floor.
· One member is in a wheelchair and has an attendant. Her room must have a wheel-in shower.

Hotel Rooms
· Doubles - 95%
· Quads - a few
· Proximity to Hospitality Suite a plus
· Rooms located on same floor(s) a plus
· Internet access mandatory. Free Internet access a plus.

Hospitality Suite
· Must be accessible to us continuously from Thursday check-in to Monday check-out.
· The suite is our central meeting place. Up to 60 people will congregate there, then split up for activities. Sometimes, only two people will be there. If it is a hotel suite, instead of a meeting room, no one will be sleeping there. A kitchen and/or refrigerator is useful.
· It must have a TV.
· Living room-type seating. If the hospitality suite and the dance location are the same, there must be room to create space for dancing.

Saturday Dance, Bar and Buffet
· Location & catering for a buffet, bar & dance on Saturday night.
· Sound equipment may be needed (microphone, speakers)
· If the hospitality suite and the dance location are the same, there must be room to create space for dancing.
· Access to outdoors (patio, deck, pool area) a plus

Location and Transportation

· Location close to major tourist attractions or city center is secondary to cost.
· Access to public transportation is very important, especially if you are outside a city center or major tourist attraction area. Please give details on your transit access.
· Parking fees?

ATTACHMENT B, BID FORM

FOURTH ANNUAL BUFFISTAS F2F, May 19 to 23, 2005

Rooms

Cost -Doubles
Cost - Quads
Bedroom suites?
Are the rooms near the hospitality suite?
Are the rooms near each other/on the same floor?
Describe Internet access

Hospitality Suite(s)

Note: We need lots of comfortable living room-style seating. The hospitality suite may be room suites, a meeting room, or other space. The Saturday dance may be (continued...)

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( continues...) held in the hospitality suit if room can be created for dancing. Please make suggestions.

Cost
Available from Friday [Thursday?] check-in to Monday check-out ?
Where is it in relation to the rooms?
Full kitchen? Refrigerator?
Does it have access to outdoors (pool area, patio, deck, rooftop)?
A/V cost for a TV

Saturday Dance

The Saturday dance may be held in the hospitality suit or a different location. Please make suggestions.

Cost
Menu samples and prices
A/V costs for an amplifier/speakers
Bar and bartender costs?

Location

Where are you located?
How far is it to a transit station?
Is there a charge for self-parking?

Please list any other amenities your hotel has

Please include tourist publications and maps that are usually made available to visitors plus any brochures or additional information with which you would to like supplement your bid.

ATTACHMENT C
INFORMATION ON PRIOR YEAR F2Fs
FOURTH ANNUAL BUFFISTAS F2F, MAY 20 TO 23, 2005

2004 F2F Holiday Inn on the Hill, Washington, DC:

The Holiday Inn provided a large interior meeting room on their penthouse floor near the exercise room and pool/terrace for our hospitality suite. We practically had the floor to ourselves. The room was set up with a few long narrow tables, several cocktail tables & chairs, large comfy lounge chairs and a TV/VCR. The penthouse was wheelchair-accessible. We could access a rooftop patio & pool area easily.

Figures on rooms reserved (with blocking under an attrition-clause contract) were:

Friday: 19 rooms (12 blocked) - $3,029
Saturday: 23 rooms (15 blocked) - $3,657
Sunday: 7 rooms (5 blocked) - $1,113

All rooms were doubles, single or 2 people: $139 per night (with tax, $159.16). Double room, quad rate (4 people) $169/night (with tax, $193.51). All our rooms were blocked for the top 2 floors under the penthouse, although early arrivals took available rooms on other floors. There was a 50% discount on parking: with discount, parking was $9/day, $11/overnight. All rooms had free high-speed Internet access.

About 70 people attended the Saturday dance. A catered appetizer buffet cost $600.00. We spent $355.30 at a cash bar, exclusive of bartender, service charges, and tax. The hospitality suite rental was $250.

NOTE: Bar revenue is exclusive of tax and service charge. For cash bars, the price paid by guests include tax and service charge, which is backed out to get revenue totals, so what was actually paid for drinks with tax and service charge was $469.00.

2003 F2F Data Hotel Annabelle and Safari Inn in Burbank, CA:

The Hotel Annabelle and Safari Inn, adjoining boutique hotels that share an outdoor swimming pool & patio, was our 2003 venue.

Approximately 20 rooms were taken, most doubles with people sharing rooms. ~5 stayed in the Annabelle Hotel ($110/night), and the rest in the Safari Inn ($85/night).

One "Presidential suite" with a full kitchen, living room with couch, chairs, TV & VCR, bathroom and separate bedroom ($150 per night) was used continuously from Friday check-in to Monday check-out as our hospitality suite.

Approximately 60 people attended the Saturday night dance. Neither hotel has meeting space per se. We used their restaurant, which closes at 6 PM, for our dance and buffet and they kept their adjoining bar open for us.

We welcome your suggestions for the 2005 F2F.

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Java, as far as I'm aware that IFP was used to get the bids for the hotels in the first place. Heather and -t got copies of it.

Back to moving.

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Yeah, that's what I was telling Kristin I had on my computer here and would send her. Which I just did- so Kristin, insent. I hope you don't feel like all your work was for nothing JC- for those of us who have never done this kind of thing, it was really helpful in letting us know what we were looking for and as ND said, getting the original bids.

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Yep, it has been used, and useful. The info was very helpful.

I think I have everything ready now for the conversation tomorrow.

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Since I've now been hammered with e-mails questioning my handling of this proposal document here was my reasoning.

My experience when setting up conferences has been that hotels like to have a single point of contact with organizing groups. I was concerned about us either jumping the gun with getting proposals from hotels before we chose our city, or then from having a large number of people contacting the same hotels again and again. It's not that folks wouldn't mean well, but rather that in a flurry of energy we could confuse our efforts.

It seems to me that when Kristin asked for this information it was fairly easy to get from Heather and -t, who, as point people for New Orleans, had all of these documents. No one was being kept from it, no one is trying to withhold it.

I'm in the midst of trying to get moved this week, and Kristin was kind enough to take some of her vacation time to work on tying up loose ends on the F2F so that we are good to go for May. Suddenly it's a crisis that a document can't be had NOW NOW NOW NOW! Amazingly she got a copy of it, as she requested, from Heather, who has had it for months, and who used it as intended to get our hotel quotes.

Okay, I'm off again, I'm on a borrowed internet connection as I'm still mid move and between two apartments until the end of the week.

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I am fine with having the hospitality suite Friday through Sunday only, and also with having no food at Prom if the only other choice is a full dinner.

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I am fine with having the hospitality suite Friday through Sunday only, and also with having no food at Prom if the only other choice is a full dinner.

Yep, me too.

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Okay, it's all set. I spoke to Marvin, got the final questions answered, and am on the verge of signing the contract and putting down the deposit on the St. Louis Hotel [link] .

To review: we aren't asking for a "ticket" per person cost this year. We are simply going to publish the final costs, open a PayPal donation pool, and once we have enough to cover the general costs, we will have extra for people who would like help with personal room costs etc. ND will explain those details better.

I know a lot of people, myself included, are a bit tapped out for actual cash money right now. I think we'll leave the PayPal gates open for some time, so please please don't worry if you wanted to donate but are unable to right now. However, if you are able to donate sooner rather than later that would be great since I'm paying the deposit on my credit card now. For those who won't be able to donate to the general fund, no worries--there are a lot of people who have already said they are going to give extra. The overall costs are not too daunting when tackled as a group.

So, general info:

• Hospitality Suite, Friday afternoon (5/20) through Sunday afternoon (5/22): $220/day = $440. The Suite is a very pleasant room with tables and comfy seating. It is fully ADA accessible, as is the Prom room described below.

• Prom, Saturday night (5/21) 9PM-2AM: Normally they don't allow events go after midnight, but they are giving us

La Louisiane room, which is gorgeous with big French doors leading out into a faux French Quarter alley...it is also located directly OVER our hospitality suite, so we can party until 2 since we won't be disturbing anyone! It will have a dance floor (we can provide our own music, no problem) plus seating and will be purely private--no sharing with any other group. There is no room rental fee if we hit a drink minimum of $1500. That's roughly $25 person. I know many people don't drink, which is fine--there are many of us who will be...ehm...exceeding that $25. If we don't reach that minimum, then we would have to pay the difference as a room rental fee (so, for example, if we only drink $1200 worth, we'd end up owing $300). In the event planning I have done, this is a very standard set-up; it would be difficult to find a hotel that didn't have something similar.

• There will be a cash bar (drink prices linked to in my original post) at the Prom and some

free appetizer and finger foods. We cannot (overtly, at least) bring our own food/drink (again, typical hotel restriction), but there should be plenty to nibble on. Heather has generously offered to cover the costs of the bartender and cashier, so that is taken care of. Thank you, Heather!

• We have a block of rooms reserved for Thursday (10 rooms), Friday and Saturday (25 rooms), and Sunday (5 rooms) at the reduced rate of $109. There is a 30 day cut-off for this rate. If we don't have enough takers, it will not affect the rest of our deal, so no worries in that sense. If there is a big turn-out early, we might also be able to get more rooms at this rate. The sooner we reserve, the better. The cut-off is April 19th.

• There is an airport shuttle that goes directly to and from this hotel for $26 round trip. Cabs are about $25 each way. The hotel is also convenient to the French Quarter (trolley line, I believe). [ETA: As explained below, it is IN the French Quarter. My bad!]

• There is free wireless high-speed internet throughout the hotel, and there are also DSL drops in all meeting rooms and hotel rooms.

If this all sounds good to everyone, I'm signing and depositing by tomorrow.

Phew!

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