Why Stay at the Host Hotel?
While a competitive request for proposal (RFP) process was administered in multiple cities nationwide, this was by far the best location in terms of the total overall package: destination, things to do, function space, sleeping accommodations, food/beverage and price.
We know that in general the Conference & Expo attendees are cost consciousness. We understand. We are too! There are lots of options when it comes to booking sleeping accommodations. While we might normally encourage bargain shopping (or stowing a few extra guests in your hotel room), there’s one catch when it comes to conferences like this one: Hosting an event of this size costs money. The hotel needs to make money to keep their staffs employed and their lights on. And we need the space to host a sprawling event that necessitates more than 90,000+ square feet of function space on our peak days.
The silver lining is that the size of our event does give us negotiating power. We have negotiated for you a discounted group rate at the Chicago Hilton.
If you’re not familiar, hotel rates are incredibly variable and depend on things like history, demand, competition, seasonality, transient vs. group business, occupancy levels and more. And, of course, we do our best to negotiate beyond that to get as fair a room rate as possible given all of the available information.
In addition to fair room rates, we have an added incentive this year. If we fill our room block at The Hilton Chicago, the hotel will pay our room rental charges for their meeting space. Currently estimated at $40,000, these are charges AACE is otherwise be responsible for paying.