The Annual Conference is often the most important (and stressful) few days of the year for an association. Many organizations invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in this meeting, lining up premier locations, popular properties, food and beverage, networking opportunities and most importantly, a conference program that inspires and educates its membership. With such a large portion of the association's outreach and annual income riding on the perfect execution of a once-a-year event, it makes sense to protect your association from potential problems. Natural disasters, increased travel costs, changes in political environment, or any number of variables outside an association's control can alter the success of the conference and have a potentially disastrous impact on finances. Just as potentially devastating are property factors, such as construction delays, room block inconsistencies and hidden penalty fees. This is an area where your association can maintain some control and protect itself against financial liability. Standard hotel contracts provided by the property itself often protect the hotel and can lead to large attrition fees for organizations.

 

AMP Management Services (AMP/MS) uses its own standard contract on behalf of our clients when committing to use a hotel for an annual conference or large meeting. This contract is significantly superior to using hotel-provided contracts because it is designed specifically to best serve your interests and protect your association in a wide range of circumstances. These provisions, identified over years of actual experience, include:

• Compensation if the hotel sells association-contracted sleeping rooms to other guests
• Clearly outlined statement of fees owed if the room block commitment is not fulfilled
• Compensation if the hotel overbooks sleeping rooms and turns away an association guest at check-in
• Flexibility to use an audio-visual company other than the in-house vendor
• Protection against electronically advertised sleeping room rates lower than the rate negotiated for the conference attendees
• Concessions if association attendees reserve and pay for significantly more sleeping rooms than originally contracted
• Clearly outlined invoice reductions if specific service standards are not met
• Specific penalties if the hotel cancels the meeting or is unable to fulfill any contract components
• Established pre-conference intervals during which the sleeping room block can be renegotiated
• Protection against factors beyond your control, such as construction, renovation or remodeling that could disrupt the meeting

AMP/MS uses a proven contract that benefits our client associations and has the buying power to require hotels and properties to use it. Your association's conference is one of its biggest assets and appropriately protecting it should be your top priority.

 

The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) is dedicated to improving the safety and care of patients. Since its inception in 1997, NPSF has worked to identify and promote a core body of knowledge by uniting disciplines and organizations across the continuum of care and championing a collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach to solutions.  Upon the decision to develop a certification program to standardize a curriculum and elevate the patient safety profession, NPSF selected AMP to provide job analysis, test development, and computer-based test administration services for the new Certified Professional in Patient Safety (CPPS) certification examination. Administration of the CPPS examination is scheduled to begin by January 2012. To learn more about NPSF, please visit www.npsf.org. 

The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) is a not-for-profit corporation founded in 1931. The mission of the Conference is to work with other institutions to develop, maintain, and apply reasonable and uniform standards of education and character for eligibility for admission to the practice of law. NCBE recently set out to evaluate the scope and body of knowledge required for competent practice as a newly licensed lawyer and selected AMP to conduct a job analysis study. With information obtained from job logs and interviews, AMP will work with NCBE subject matter experts to create a national survey to be distributed in early 2012 to thousands of practitioners. The analysis of this data will then be used to determine the current job responsibilities of a newly licensed lawyer and will allow NCBE to make decisions regarding future assessment tools. To learn more about NCBE, please visit www.ncbex.org.

 

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