Nobody likes lawyers until they need one.
With sincerest apologies to all of the fine attorneys out there, that sage little bit of snarky wisdom illustrates how litigious our society has become, and how important legal eagles are to surviving in it.
In this issue of Meetings South, we’re fortunate enough to have an all-star team of meetings industry lawyers who have offered to share their expertise on how you can actually avoid having to procure their services.
Hopefully, if you take our “10 Legal Pits You Can Avoid” story to heart you won’t find yourself in a bind—by sidestepping some of the top meetings legal landmines.
By now I’m sure you’ve noticed a little lagniappe with the April issue—our first annual Meetings Florida supplement. Well, actually it’s more than just “a little extra,” as it weighs in at a hefty 76 pages.
Written by Lisa Simundson, our Florida/Caribbean editor, and edited by Managing Editor Lori Tenny, this little perfect-bound slice of meetings heaven provides both brawn and beauty through its meticulously crafted stories, resource-rich guide listings and a look and feel from Designer Shirin Ardakani that showcases a colorful state that is most definitely at home in front of a camera.
Moving on, our Small Meetings feature package this issue explores how large hotels and resorts are honing in on the little guys, who are more likely to procure services such as in-house audiovisual and often spend more, per attendee, on F&B than their big-numbers brethren. Even super-sized facilities such as those operated by Gaylord Hotels are taking notice.
So with many large properties reaching out to the small meetings market with “hotel-within-a-hotel” offerings and other strategies, site-selection choices abound these days.
With such an increasing number of quality venues available for your meetings, conventions and events, narrowing down the options is becoming more of a challenge.
To help your site-selection process, Meetings South annually polls its readers to find out what Southern hotels and resorts have risen to the top of their lists during the past year.
This is your chance to give some love to the meeting facilities that have done right by you and your groups over the last year. You can vote online at www.meetingstoday.com/awards.
We’ll publish the results in our September issue.
Finally, run your eyes down to the bottom of this page. We’ve added a new feature to the Inbox section by inviting meetings industry ListServ MeCo, or Meetings Community, to contribute some of the most interesting questions and answers it has posted recently. In fact, the bottom half of this page is for meeting planner input and resources, so make sure to send your observations and tips to us at editor@meetingsmedia.com.
Enjoy this jam-packed April edition, and huzzah for spring!
