Annual Conference Housing in St. Louis

A number of people have called the Annual Conference Office in recent days interested in making hotel reservations at downtown St. Louis hotels other than the three in the Annual Conference housing block (Renaissance Grand, Holiday Inn, and Hyatt). There are certainly many other hotels in the downtown area beyond the three that the Annual Conference Office signed contracts with five years ago. Some of them even have free breakfasts.

Some people have asked me: Why don’t you have any rooms there? My honest answer is: I don’t know why the decisions were made that were made five years ago. But what I do know is that the Executive Director at that time signed contracts for 977 hotel rooms on each of the four “peak” nights and that the Church of the Brethren has to pay for those rooms, whether anyone stays in them or not.

Paying for hotel rooms that no Brethren stay in could cost us thousands and thousands of dollars (like it did in 2009 at the San Diego conference). Ultimately, it will result in us having to have a two-tiered registration price: $105 (non-delegate) if you stay in the conference housing block or much higher if you choose to book outside of that block, risking that we will have to pay for unused rooms. A second reason for booking within the conference hotel block is that those three hotels pay the convention center, based on the number of hotel nights that we use, for a portion of the meeting space rental cost that we are charged by the convention center.

Grace and Peace,

Chris Douglas, Director of Conference Office,
Church of the Brethren, 847-742-5100 ext. 228