Meeting industry

Do not let congress ban companies from hosting events and conferences. Take action! 

Sen. Kerry has introduced legislation that would ban all 421 firms including the nation's largest banks that received money from the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) from hosting, sponsoring or paying for conferences, holiday parties and entertainment events.    If passed, I don't need to tell you the profound impact on the business travel industry and the nation's economy it would have. This legislation would not only impact the affected companies it would have a chilling, immediate impact on all companies. This hurts travel managers, hotels, airlines, rental cars, EVERYONE!  It is estimated that without the jobs generated by meetings and conventions unemployment would jump from 7.6% to 8.2!    You, as the expert in business travel must educate Congress on the importance of managed travel and the benefits it brings. NBTA has issued a set of guidelines to the U.S. Treasury for effective managed travel based on your practices. You have made travel for meetings and events a cost effective tool that help businesses grow. We need to give these real world practices time to work. We can't afford negative news stories to drive Congress to manage travel. You have to make sure our government knows that. Take action at http://tinyurl.com/bc2n75 Amy Richards, stage manager, writes a timely letter to the NY Times on this topic in response to Maureen Dowd's op-ed from last Wed. Go Amy! To the Editor: I don't care if you publish this but please forward it to Maureen Dowd: RE: I Ponied Up for Sheryl Crow? Thanks, Ms. Dowd.  Thanks a lot for yet another kick at the wounded body of the meetings industry. Every time you and your ilk write an op-ed like this, another CEO decides to cancel a meeting that has been planned for months, not because they don't have the money, not because they don't have the business need, but because they don't want to become a poster child for "wasteful" spending. When these meetings are canceled because of the optics, the savings are not so great, as contracts have been signed and most of the money has already been spent. Northern Trust had no doubt been planning the event for at least a year, long before they got the TARP funds. The people who really get hurt are all the folks working in and around the hotels  - the maids, security guards, taxi drivers, food and beverage workers.  And then there's folks like me - one of the small army of freelance stagehands, designers, producers and stage managers who are  responsible for the "shows" in the ballrooms.  None of us are eligible for unemployment. Few of us are working these days.   Yes, it's fun to jump on the clueless fat cats, but you should know that your columns are helping to make jobs disappear for thousands and thousands of workers.  And there's no bailout in sight for us. Sincerely, Amy Richards