The annual meetings of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) are large. There are only a handful of hotels that have a sufficient number of sleeping rooms for attendees and adequate meeting space for panels. Normally, MESA does not use convention centers because they cost at a minimum sixty thousand dollars right off the top. In the few cases where we have used them (e.g., Anchorage and Montréal), those facilities were provided at no cost by the convention bureaus of the cities. MESA members prefer the warmer and cozier atmosphere of a single hotel to the cavernous meeting space at convention centers and the multiple hotels their use requires. Only hotels that can provide at least eight hundred sleeping rooms on peak night and a minimum of thirty meeting rooms of appropriate sizes can be considered for a MESA meeting. That means that we have to use Hyatts, Marriotts, Hiltons, Sheratons, and so forth. There are no other options.
MESA enters into hotel contracts many years in advance of the meeting and, in fact, MESA’s annual meetings are currently booked through 2018. Hotel contracts require MESA to place itself at enormous financial risk because MESA must guarantee that attendees will fill a minimum number of sleeping rooms at the hotel. That is why we ask attendees to stay at the contracted hotel. If we do not meet our contracted guarantees, we pay heavy penalties. We do not pay outright for the meeting space. It is provided by the hotel based upon the number of sleeping rooms in our room bloc. Occasionally, people grumble that hotel rooms are cheaper for AAA, AAR, AHA, or APSA meetings. They sometimes are, because whereas MESA draws 2,000 attendees (more or less), our much larger sister organizations draw two to six times that number. Like almost everything, the more you buy, the less expensive it is, including hotel rooms.
Because a majority of MESA’s members reside east of the Mississippi River, MESA meets more often in east coast cities. We meet in Washington DC every three years, and those meetings are typically our largest. Boston is a big draw, and we will meet there again in 2016 when MESA celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. There is something about Boston meetings and MESA anniversaries. MESA celebrated its twentieth and fortieth anniversaries in Boston as well. We would love to meet in New York, but it is too expensive for a group of MESA’s size: room rates would easily exceed three hundred dollars per night (before taxes). Opportunities on the west coast are fewer, but California always beckons (i.e., San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego). Seattle and Portland would require the use of convention centers, and Phoenix is pricey. Denver is new to MESA. We meet in San Antonio in 2018, and could consider Houston and Dallas as potential sites. We are in New Orleans in October 2013, and we are excited to support that city post-Hurricane Katrina. Midwest cities, with the exception of Chicago, require the use of convention centers, and it is hard to get people excited about cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Kansas City, although they all offer unique opportunities of their own. In terms of meeting in a single hotel in the south, Georgia and Florida have adequate sized hotels in Atlanta, Miami, and Orlando.
People are surprised to learn that hotel meeting space does not include any audiovisual (AV) equipment. MESA must pay for AV equipment, even for something as basic as a microphone. For the past several years, MESA has contracted with a supplier called Visual Aids Electronics (VAE). VAE provides superb service and equipment discounts. Still, the AV bill for the 2011 annual meeting came to approximately fifty-five thousand dollars for MESA’s four-day meeting. That is why we ask presenters to carefully consider their AV needs and forego AV equipment unless it’s absolutely necessary.
In addition to requiring space for its own panels and other functions, MESA also contracts space for its many affiliated associations, who hold meetings just before the MESA annual meeting gets underway. In 2011, thirty-eight affiliated groups held at least one function–some of them multiple functions—at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. MESA assigns space and works with the affiliated groups to insure that their functions run smoothly.
Annual meeting “profits” pay a portion of staff salaries and benefits. Once staff salaries and overhead are allotted to the annual meeting (i.e., the portion of staff salaries where they are working on the annual meeting), the association just about breaks even. This is not a bad thing. It means that the association’s meeting is solvent.
[This article first appeared in Issues in Middle East Studies: April 2013 (Vol. 35:1) as "Annual Meeting 101: The Whys and Hows of Staging a MESA Annual Meeting"]
[Click here for details on the 2013 MESA Annual Meeting, which is being held 10-13 October in New Orleans.]