Smart Meetings

The latest version of the Hotel Price Index was recently released by hotels.com, and Las Vegas came out on top (or bottom, as far as average room rates go). The index measured the average hotel room rates for 2009 in countries and cities across the world, as well as comparing cities and states in the U.S. Those figures where also contrasted against the room rates for 2008.

Of the 77 worldwide cities listed with the header: “Average hotel prices for the first six months of 2009, compared to the same period in 2008,” Las Vegas came in dead last with an average room rate of $85/night, down 18% from 2008 when the rate was $103. By comparison, New York was No. 8 on the list with a rate of $199 for the 2009 period, down 24%, while the San Francisco Bay Area came in at No. 61 with a rate of $127, down 17% from the year before.

The report doesn’t specify the level of hotels that were included in the index, but one can only assume the properties are hotels listed on hotels.com. The website casts a pretty wide net, which includes Best Westerns and Red Roof Inns along with all Marriotts and Hiltons across their brands. This will obviously skew the results for destinations that either lack budget hotels, like some resort towns, or those that have a full range of properties. Regardless, with the massive room inventory in Vegas, simple supply and demand dictates that prices will fall, and they obviously have. So I say screw the “boondoggle” connotations that come with a meeting in Vegas, and get a great deal while the gettin’s still good.

I am flying to Los Angeles tonight to check out some new properties in the Los Angeles area and attend MPISCC at L.A. Live. Once I am at SFO and have boarded my flight, I will be faced with the question aboard my flight, “what would you like to drink?” The stewardess will promptly bring me my selected beverage with a napkin and some sort of packaged snack. Once I have consumed my one-gulp-sized beverage, what happens to that little plastic cup?

Well, the flight attendants come and pick them up, of course. They walk around taking all of your trash and placing into one receptacle. Plastic cups go in with packaging, food waste, discarded newspapers and more—there seems to be no method to the madness. A lot of what is disposed of on airplanes, and in relation to air, travel appears to be recyclable.



Well my suspicions are correct. According to Green America, Airline passengers create some 881 million pounds of waste per year (half of it created in flight) and the majority of it is not recycled. In fact, 75% of it can be recycled and currently 20% is in fact recycled.

So which airlines are recycling and which recycling programs are up in the air? A new report by  ResponsibleShopper.org, a division of Green America, “What Goes Up Must Go Down: The Sorry State of Recycling in the Airline Industry” aims to answer my question. They report that Delta, Virgin America, Virgin Atlantic and Southwest top ranked in recycling programs, and by top ranked, I mean these airlines has received grades that ranged from B- to C—those grades wouldn’t cut it for my parents, they shouldn’t cut it for today’s travelers. Trailing the list, or today’s recycling flunkies, are United and US Airways—can we put them on academic probation for airlines?

So now that you know the grades, what can you do? Help raise these marks and their ROB (recycling on board) by writing a letter to airport executives. To take action, click here.

Tonight, when I fly I am going to ask what they do with that trash—I can’t wait to hear the response. But I am flying Virgin America, so it may actually be recycled.

Yesterday our staff set out to the Acqua Hotel just north of our office in Mill Valley, Calif. You feel tranquil as soon as you walk in with the hotel's soothing colors and a clean, modern design featuring unique accents such as grass “growing” near the waterfalls and fireplaces in the lobby. The 49-room boutique Joie de Vivre property was the perfect place to unplug and get down to business.



The meeting room we occupied for the day had awesome views of the water (as you can see from the picture I snapped above). The service was attentive, yet unobtrusive as their staff manned our room and quietly refreshed the food and beverage. Their F&B was great and much surpassed the typical hotel standards. We feasted on fresh fruit (think pineapple and blueberries) and pastries for breakfast, and chowed down on gourmet boxed-lunches midday.

The experience was great—the day was productive and the Acqua provided the venue for our creativity to bloom. It further proved that even we need to have an off-site meeting or two sometimes. 

The March issue of Smart Meetings magazine is in the mail, so if it hasn’t hit your desk yet, keep an eye out for it soon. You’ll notice this issue has the Smart Meetings Site Solutions wrapped with it, and if you haven’t flipped through it in a while, you’ll notice we’ve added some editorial. There’s the Smart Checklist, with tips for holding greener meetings, and some information on Nevada. There’s also a page of information on drive meetings—those regional meetings and events close enough for any attendee to simply hop in their car and go.

But upon further reflection, we failed to include a very crucial bit of information: music. I can’t imagine driving two or three hours along an empty stretch of highway without proper tunes to accompany me. So with that in mind, the following is a list of the top ten road songs, in no particular order, according to me. Granted, I could easily take the list to 100 or more, but in the interest of blog brevity etiquette, I’ve kept it simple. Feel free to add your own, mix, match or otherwise copy outright.

1. “Life is a Highway” – Tom Cochrane: You won’t be driving in the slow lane when this ‘90s tune comes on.
2. “Highway 61” – Fred McDowell and/or “Highway 61 Revisited” – Bob Dylan: McDowell for the full-on classic blues version (especially for drives through the deep South) or Dylan, because it’s Dylan.
3. “Route 66” – Nat King Cole: Get hip to this tune by the coolest King ever, about the coolest road ever.
4. “King of the Road” – Roger Miller: A classic song that could’ve been written by Woodie Guthrie… and everyone knows the chorus, “I’m a, king of the road.”
5. “State Trooper” – Bruce Springsteen: One of the boss’ lesser known tunes, but when you pass a police cruiser going 85, you’ll all be singing the refrain, “Mister State Trooper/please don’t stop me/please don’t stop me/please don’t stop me.”
6. “Roadrunner” – Jonathon Richman and the Modern Lovers: A rockin’ love letter to driving in your car at night with the radio on.
7. “On the Road Again” – Willie Nelson: Willie’s seen more blacktop than the rest of us put together, and here’s his ode to the road.
8. “Truckin’” – Grateful Dead: The No. 2 road warriors after Willie, a song that was probably written on a tour bus after an all-night bender.
9. “Hit the Road Jack” – Ray Charles: The perfect song for the end of a long, difficult meeting.
10. “Pilgrim” – Steve Earle and The Del McCoury Band: A song to soothe your soul (and butt) after a long drive.

…and here’s a few additions from Zac Dillon, our content manager:
11. “Cars” – Gary Numan
12. “Rocky Mountain Way” – Joe Walsh
13. 40 Oz. to Freedom (the entire album) – Sublime

…and a few more from me:
14. “Radar Love” – Golden Earing: “I’ve been driving all night/my hands sweat on the wheel”
15. “Low Rider” – War: SoCal cool from the ‘70s that’s still fresh.

Over the weekend, I attended San Francisco’s Southwest Airlines Chinese New Year Festival & Parade. San Francisco is home to one of the largest Chinatowns in the world and the Chinese culture can be found throughout the city whether it’s in Chinatown's bustling thoroughfares and its Asian-style buildings, its many residents of Chinese descent, plethora of Chinese restaurants or local markets in the Sunset district. While the New Year itself was celebrated earlier in February, the Year of the Tiger was feted in style with hundreds of people clad in stripes and tiger costumes as well as cultural dancers, traditional music and floats honoring the rich Chinese culture.



In all my years as a Bay Area resident, I have sadly never attended the parade. Celebrating lunar year 4,707 in the Chinese calendar, the event was well worth the crowd and the myriad corporate sponsor floats—some of which were pretty awesome. This celebration, which marches through downtown, Union Square and through the gates of Chinatown, has deep roots in San Francisco. According to the parade website, it started in the 1860s by the Chinese in San Francisco as a forum to educate the locals about their culture. The parade has since grown to be regarded as the largest Chinese New Year celebration outside of China with more than 100 entities parading, from schools and floats to government officials and cultural dancers.



Scheduling a meeting or event while a cultural festival is going on is a built-in group activity. This parade, like many other cultural festivals, is designed for the masses, free to the public and gives visitors a great sense of the local culture. Almost every meeting destination has at least one major festival if not many throughout the year—local CVBs would be a great resource for these types of events. You can organize a theme dinner around the event such as Dim Sum before the parade or a Chinese dinner after in nearby Chinatown. You could even incorporate a contest or team-building activity at the event with a company or team vote on the best float or a quiz on cultural facts for a prize.

 For my low-tech, video short of the parade click here.