Hello Mr. Kilburg,
I have been working with Marie Madden for several years now on various meetings and conferences I organize for non-profit industry associations. Marie has always been great to work with, but on my most recent conference, she went above and beyond to help with the planning.
My last conference was held the week of March 21 at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront hotel. My group had a very successful conference there in 2014 so we expanded our meeting program and increased our room block for this same conference last month.
Unfortunately, travel budgets had changed since our last conference so our attendance was much lower than in 2014. That meant possible attrition costs for not meeting our guest room block commitment and our catering minimum. Since the conference was organized for a non-profit, that was particularly worrisome. Marie lent her expertise to help our group strategize on the catering. She also continuously monitored our guest room pick up and requested our registration list to cross reference with the hotel to make sure we received credit for every room booked by our group, even if it was outside our block, so the room counted towards our room commitment.
When things go well with a meeting or conference, you almost take the planning for granted. But when things don’t go so well, then you especially appreciate and value working with an experienced meeting planner.
Hence my motivation for sending this email – I wanted to recognize Marie for her great effort and support of my last “near disaster” conference in Seattle.
Janet O’Neil
Marketing Communications
ETS-Lindgren
