Why are ALA room rates sometimes higher than rates paid by other conferences?
Hotel revenues come from sleeping room rental, meeting room rental and catering. Each association and each conference presents a different balance between these factors. In ALA’s case, because of the number of separately-scheduled meetings and events (over 2500), ALA may require all the meeting rooms – meaning that the hotel cannot book local conferences or meetings, weddings, etc. ALA does not currently pay a rental on meeting rooms. ALA also does relatively little catering, compared with associations and tradeshows in other professional fields or industries. For instance, ALA does not include any meals in the cost of registration – which might decrease hotel rates, but would increase registration rates.
