Planning and organizing a national convention is usually hard enough—a mad scramble to make sure hundreds of people from all over the country have a useful and fun experience and don’t get lost. But add a few hundred head of cattle into the mix and you’ve got a national convention that’s equal parts meeting and cowboy round-up.
That was the story in Branson recently during the national convention of Beefmaster Breeders United, a San Antonio-based professional cattleman’s association that deals with the highly prized Beefmaster brand of cattle. A record number of Beefmasters came to Branson wanting all the usual services of a national convention: hundreds of hotel rooms, spacious meeting areas, breakout session workspaces, a banquet hall, exhibition space, and the like. But the Beefmasters also wanted accommodations for a few hundred heads of prize cattle. No bull.
“We’re lucky that there’s so much space in Branson, that’s the only way we could have handled it,” says Joann Chamberlain, who handles meetings and conventions for the Branson Radisson Hotel. “We’re right between two large theaters in Branson that have large auditoriums and huge parking lots. It really gives us a lot of flexibility if a group wants to do something large or unusual.”
The Radisson provided most of the traditional convention services for the 400 cattle breeders who attended the annual convention. Beefmasters from all across the country came to elect new officers and directors, participate in educational seminars with titles like “Low Stress Cattle Working,” swap tips on the gentle art of cow insemination, and attend an awards banquet.
But for many, the real action took place just outside the convention hotel. The parking lot of the adjacent Grand Palace Theater was turned into a giant cattle pen where prized heads were auctioned off to the highest bidder. (The top bull this year went for more than $60,000.) Meeting planners had to provide the group with portable cattle pens, 24-hour security, and—ahem—a sizable clean-up crew to tackle the aftermath.
“There was a lot of planning in-house for that convention,” Chamberlain says. “They wanted a lot of breakout sessions and seminar rooms, plus they had a luncheon and an awards banquet. So there was a lot to do.”
Oh, and guess what was served at both the luncheon and the awards dinner?
“Beef,” Chamberlain says.
