Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 00:43:52 -0500
To: Capclave 2006 <capclave at yahoogroups.com>,
    WSFA forum -- Yahoo list <wsfa-forum at yahoogroups.com>,
    WSFA List <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
From: Elspeth Kovar <EKovar at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Capclave hotel update
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Consider this my Capclave status report since I'm going to be at Lunacon
rather than the upcoming WSFA meeting:

First, looking at the Capclave membership list there are a lot of people I
know are going who haven't registered yet, including people on the
committee.  (Which seems to include me although I could have sworn that I'd
already gotten one.  Barry, could you check for me?)  Please, register
early and register often.

We have the same room rates as last year, $119 single/double $129
triple/quad.  Pointing out that they're the same and our membership rate is
the same will be good for advertising.  That's something for M. Nelson and
Cathy to work on.

Less interesting to the membership but financially interesting to us is
that we've kept the same F&B -- food and beverage, which includes meeting
room rental -- as well.  We really do have a wonderful Sales Rep.

(I'll get to the function space in a moment.)

She also agrees with our plan to market the area as part of marketing the
convention.  As such we can use pictures of the hotel from their website
(Sam, you have the notes: I think she said that she could get us those same
pictures so we would have more flexibility) to put on ours.  She's also
going to collect the promotional material and information about the area
that she has, which we can combine with a bunch of research that I've done.

We're going to have our own Hilton room reservation page.  Once it's taken
care of we can link to it or they can link to us -- Sam is working with one
of their people on that.  One thing we *must* add to our hotel reservation
page is for people to add a note to their reservation about where they want
to be in reference to noise.  By now Worldcons have fairly standard
language for that; if I haven't pulled it up by the time I get back from
Lunacon remind me to do so but it's been tested and revised until by now
it's pretty solid.

Other than the promotional material that needs to be put together into
something useful Sam will be working with Paul and Gayle on these.

Concerning function space:

We have the Potomac and Chesapeake rooms -- those are the two big ones, one
of which was used last year for the Dealer's Room and the other for the
Town Square.
We have Council and Quorum, which last year were used for programming and
office space respectively.
We don't have Severn and Annapolis, the two rooms across from Potomac and
Chesapeake which were used for programming last year.

We do have the newly built Capital Room, which our sales rep put aside for
us long before she and I got in touch this year.  It's new enough that
there aren't even floorplans yet but Sam has the dimensions.  A meeting in
session allowed us only the briefest of glances into it but it's one room
that can be divided with an airwall, which means that it can be one big
room or two smaller ones.

There are other things from the meeting but I'm going to happily let Sam
fill you in: he's doing a great job.

Elspeth