I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes about one of the biggest challenges we face in the sports event travel industry and those of you who attended our recent Symposium in Oklahoma City know that at one point during proceedings I mentioned this challenge, and the challenge is the increased reliance on room rebates and commissions to properly fund events.  It’s a serious development in our industry, one that 20 years ago did not even exist.  But today we are seeing an increased reliance on the part of either by event owner, destination, or by several groups combined to apply room rebates to properly fund an event, instead of watching the budget or perhaps instead of charging more for the team registration fee.

Now we all realize what happens, an event owner takes a look at the registration fees that other event owners are charging and they decide they can’t raise the rates, so one temptation is we won’t raise our rates, we’ll increase the room rebate.  I’m not sure I understand when the hotel and hotel room rates were suddenly the focal point of the sports event travel industry. It’s a disturbing trend folks.  If under one set of circumstances, a room rebate is applied for say $5 a night to pay for increased cost of officials or referees and when teams register they’re told there is an extra $5 for offsetting the cost of officials or referees and the room rate itself is reasonable, there is no problem, and the event can take place.  But let’s be honest with ourselves, one reason we came to the Stay to Play concept was to capture room rebates and the commissions attached through a third party booker.  That’s why we went to stay to play and that’s why, although it might not be 50% of the events in the US, a very large percentage of events in the US are Stay to Play today.

Let’s say the event takes place and the event goes off without a hitch, except for one thing.  The hotel room rate instead of being, say $100, is $120 plus tax every night, what’s going to happen?  Those parents are going to leave saying, “boy, it was a great event but we are never coming back to X Hotel, or XYZ destination again because its’ too expense”.  Those of you who are event owners aren’t getting away with anything under those conditions, because the truth is there should be fewer cities in the future to bid on those events once the word gets out.

So let’s all think this through, let’s all realize that when room rebates and commissions get out of control the people who pay the freight are the very people we work so hard to get to our destinations and if they leave dissatisfied they’re ultimately going to be dissatisfied with the industry.  Now how can we control this? First of all those of you who are setting the rebates and setting the commission rates need to keep them under tight control.  And secondly, the destination that are saying yes to some of these deals need to say start saying no to some of these deals because the cost is too high.  If an event needs, and now this is my personal opinion, if an event has to get more than say $15 a night in total commissions and room rebates, maybe that event shouldn’t take place.  And I certainly would submit that it might be a very good idea that destinations stop bidding on the event.  I’m just saying.

Video blog: Don Schumacher, CSEE, Executive Director
National Association of Sports Commissions
Published on June 16, 2014