Zephyr Conferences

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  • COVID-19

Success With COVID in 2019

December 17, 2021 By Allan Leave a Comment

At Zephyr Conferences and our sister tour companies we hosted 511 attendees this year. The reality is COVID is going to affect our tours and conferences; we have to expect that. However, our goal is to minimize infections on our tours and, especially, minimize community spread at our events. We were successful in this effort with ZERO instances of community transmission in 2021.

We did experience three cases of COVID:

  • One person tested positive before flying to a tour and thus canceled, which shows the effectiveness of pre-event testing.
  • A second person tested positive after returning from our Wine Media Conference but infected no one else while at the conference. This person came from a COVID hot zone and likely was infected prior to the event. Every person at the WMC was vaccinated.
  • A third person tested positive at the end of a tour before returning home, likely catching it when on her own before the tour started. This person was vaccinated and symptom free. All other tour participants were vaccinated and did not contract COVID.

So what does this tell us? We can’t avoid COVID. But our policies are working to keep our participants safe.

Filed Under: News

Update on 2021 Conferences

November 1, 2020 By Allan Leave a Comment

We were lucky enough to run two of our five conferences before the pandemic hit in March. We canceled the other three events scheduled in 2020.

For 2021, we have rescheduled the events so that all five conferences are on the calendar for August or later. We believe this will give the country more time to control COVID-19 and will place all events during a time period when we can spend more time outside.

In fact, we are currently looking at outside venues for three or four of our 2021 conferences. We also have a long list of safety precautions we will be taking when we next run a conference.

In short, we are planning for 2021 to be able to safely run conferences if COVID is still around and a problem. Given our smaller conference sizes and ability to be outdoors for much of the event, we do expect to be running most or all of our 2021 events.

Filed Under: News

Update on 2020 Conferences

May 22, 2020 By Allan 2 Comments

The COVID-19 virus has become a pandemic since we last posted in late February.

Plans for Upcoming Conferences

We will analyze each conference case-by-case to determine three things: 1) Will we be legally allowed to run the event based on state, county, and city regulations. 2) Do we believe we can run the conference safely. 3) Do our attendees, speakers, and sponsors wish to attend given the changed circumstances.

  • We were lucky to have been able to run two of our five annual conference before the pandemic hit. The Beer Marketing & Tourism Conference and the Wine Marketing & Tourism Conference are now planned for 2021.
  • The International Food Blogger Conference is scheduled for November. We are monitoring the situation weekly but the conference is still scheduled as planned.
  • The Beer Now Conference is still scheduled for August in Austin, Texas. It is likely that the state of Texas and city of Austin will allow us to run this event. In addition, we believe that with the smaller size of this conference, we can make adjustments to our plans to dramatically increase safety.
  • The Wine Media Conference is a different story. With a group size of approximately 220 attendees and with six multi-day excursions planned throughout Oregon, we did not believe we could run this event safely in 2020. The WMC has been postponed to August of 2021.

Safety Procedures

We expect the COVID-19 virus to be around and impacting society for long enough that we will be running conferences while still under the threat of the virus. As such, we have prepared a Safety Procedures page to explain how we plan to keep you safe during our events.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: COVID-19, pandemic

Conferences and the Coronavirus

February 28, 2020 By Allan 1 Comment

The COVID-19 coronavirus is serious and our hopes are for a quick disappearance of the virus and a return to normalcy for those areas afflicted.

It is a bit difficult to be planning conferences when fears of a worldwide pandemic are prevalent. No one wants to be sitting on an airplane or in a conference hall if they think they will catch a potentially fatal disease. Even worse, we at Zephyr Conferences are part of a small business that also runs tours around the world, including six tours this year in Italy. So we will be impacted.

For now, of course, all our conferences are full steam ahead. With one already done for this year, a second happening next week, and three others not scheduled until August or later we expect to be spared any disruption.

Having said that, we can understand you, our attendees, not wanting to book now for something in the future that might be uncertain.

To alleviate your concerns, we are waiving all cancellation penalties and providing full refunds to any of our upcoming conferences if you register between today and March 31.

So please make your plans with confidence you will not lose your registration fees.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: cancellation, Coronavirus

A Conference Organizer’s View on Selecting a Host City

December 9, 2019 By Allan Leave a Comment

Conferences take one of two major tacks in choosing a host city: stay in the same location or move each year. We at Zephyr Conferences have chosen to move each year.

While that brings distinct advantages to our audiences (especially getting to see new food, wine, and beer regions) it brings with it a lot of additional work. Finding new host locations is a major part of running our five annual conferences.

Initial Criteria

In searching for host locations, our first criteria is that the city or region is related to our subject matter, which is wine, beer, or food. We just can’t run a wine conference in an area not well known for its wine, can’t run a beer conference in a city without a substantial number of local breweries, and won’t run a food conference in a city without a vibrant restaurant, chef, and food producer scene.

We then have a second decision to make: do we pick a larger city that has easy plane access but often comes with higher costs or do we pick a smaller, regional city that usually comes with lower costs and more support but is also harder to reach. The answer is we evaluate both types of host cities and weigh the pros and cons each year.

The Process

We never approach a hotel directly but, instead, always work through the local Destination Marketing Organization (DMO), winery association, or brewery guild. Almost all DMOs are set up to send out solicitations to their hotels and to provide basic tourism information but, to be honest, that is not very useful to us. If we were looking for a hotel, we would just research and contact them ourselves.

We always create our own Request for Proposal (RFP) related to each conference. Sometimes we send out a notice to many DMOs, winery associations, and brewery guilds asking who might be interested to host a conference. Other times we have 5 – 10 key potential locations (on a long list we keep for each conference) and send RFPs just to those. Other times we already have contact with a prime location and work one-on-one just with that local host.

Working With Local Hosts

In working with a DMO, winery association, or brewery guild the most important criteria is whether they take the time to address us individually. In our experience, most DMOs around the country are outstanding. They are well funded, have quality staff, and take the time to respond to our inquiries. Winery associations and, even more so, brewery guilds usually have less funding and thus fewer staff, making them less able to respond to us.

But in general, all these organizations do a good job. What is different, however, is how much they really care about our conferences. The reality is most big cities are full of huge conferences, don’t really need us, and aren’t ready to offer anything beyond basic support. We find that smaller, regional cities are usually much more interested in hosting us and promoting themselves as a wine, beer, or food destination. (Interestingly, back in 2008 – 2010 during the heart of the Great Recession, big cities were more apt to provide help. Those days might return.)

Ultimately, the success of a local region often boils down to one individual who want to bring a conference to the area and takes the time to get involved in the process.

What We Ask

Three of our five conferences include an audience composed of media (beer, wine, and food) and so bring inherent advantages to the host location. The other two bring in industry leaders to discuss wine or beer marketing and tourism, topics for which many regions wish to be known.

We thus recognize we have different conferences from the norm – perhaps a company annual meeting or industry trade group convention – and also have different requests of our local hosts. These involve working with us to engage in marketing, helping us with alcohol pouring permits, rallying local industry involvement, and providing financial support.

As just one example, at our International Food Blogger Conference we have a “Taste of” event in which 10 – 15 local restaurants come in to serve their best food items to our blogger, media, and social media influencer attendees. This is a win for attendees and the local restaurant scene but is difficult for us to arrange without the support of the local DMO.

Getting in the Pipeline

If you are interested to host one of our conferences, we suggest one of a number of steps:

  1. Fill out our Host Application.
  2. Attend the conference you are interested to host. This is an important step as it gives you more information on the conference, gives us the ability to meet you, and makes it clear you are committed. Many, many of our choices in the past have been influenced by having met someone at our conference who subsequently submits a host application.
  3. Complete the RFP. When we do send out RFPs for hosting, consider filling it out even if you are not quite ready to host. We often receive multiple quality bids to host a conference and often will select one location for the year in question but another location for the following year. Determining a host is usually a multi-year process.
  4. Talk to us: If you have questions about hosting a conference, let us know. We can assess your region and talk through potential solutions, such as partnering with another nearby region or seeking a grant.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Conference, Hosting

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