Steele Meetings in 2015?

[Adrienne E.]

Originally Posted by Karthik

It was also an issue for regionals. We saw hotel prices increase by $20-50/night when Steele took over bookings for regionals, compared to when we booked the exact same hotels directly in the past. I'm sure the convenience factor of using Steele is very appealing for some teams, however there are many others who'd prefer just to work directly with the hotels and not pay the premium for Steele's service.

+1

We have had multiple issues, the biggest of which was showing up in Atlanta in 2010 and the hotel didn't have our 22 room reservation (I still owe Joanne Pruniak for helping me through that).

To piggy back on many others, we have had problems with refunds, and most recently them mistakenly charging my personal credit card $11,000 because they made me put it in that information even though we were paying by check. The refund didn't process before my statement came out and it was a huge problem for me.

I prefer to deal directly with hotels for all of our regionals, but they make this nearly impossible at worlds. I have been in contact with a few hotels in St. Louis and many are already 100% booked for FIRST which is frustrating.
I would hope a new company will solve some of these problems, but some of them are just the nature of these events.