We will meet each Wednesday Morning, 9:30am. Tentatively, we will use the Secret Garden as the venue.
Next Meeting: October 15th.
Minutes:
Attendees: Lora, Karen, Joyce, Sara, Tracy, Jennifer, Ralph
Lora discussed her experiences with busses:
- inherited from mother
- very itinerary based
- Elder hostel is biggest and they do ride rails, geology & hiking
- Hot Springs Inn busses referred by Lora
- Her bus business is down, few bookings for Sept 2009
- Very structured tours, "herded"
- Bus people are not big shoppers and are not typically higher income
- Takes a long time to get new itineraries developed (2-3 years)
Karen mentioned that there is an organization http://www.tourcolorado.com/ that we could join to see if we got more tours. Pricing is around $450 per year it is thought.
SMERFS were discussed. These are groups (Social, Military / Govt, Educators, Religious, Fraternal). The new “advanced SMERF” market now encompasses sports, special interest, ethnic, talent and dance organizations
ONCE CONSIDERED THE DREGS of the meetings market, this highly budget-conscious, will-gladly-meet-on-weekends market has gained a new cachet in recent years: facilities and bureaus around the country are courting SMERF meetings following the drop in deep-pocket corporate meetings and a falloff in attendance at professional and trade association meetings. As one respondent in our survey put it: “SMERF meetings, many of them, are not as heavily driven by business needs but more by social and personal ties, so in that sense these types of meetings are more recession-proof than most.”
We agreed we would fill out the venue section of the plan.
Diverged on how to communicate when groups are in town to take advantage of the customer appreciation concept.
Joyce suggested researching meeting planners international.
Karen suggested researching colorado association of non profits
We need to define what we mean by groups
We need to define who gets appreciation form
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