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  • 1.  Assessing Guest Fees

    Posted 09-18-2019 17:29
    I'm curious to know anyone assesses guest fees for their conferences. We consider guests to be spouses, partners, and family members. We currently do not have a fee for guests, but have found the number of guest registrations to be increasing over the years along with F&B. We are thinking about implementing this but are unsure if this would deter our registrants from attending. Our conferences are typically in resorts/vacation destinations so we do get a number of guest registrations.

    I know how to do this in cvent, I'm asking in regards to your fee structure. Some questions that have come up:

    • When implementing a guest fee, do folks still register their guests and pay the fee?
    • Has this deterred some from attending?
    • Do you have any feedback from attendees about the guest fee?
    • What is a reasonable fee (We're not looking to charge the entire F&B fee per person)?
    • Do you charge a flat fee or a fee per reception?

    #Miscellaneous

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    Selina Lara
    Meetings Assistant
    ICI
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  • 2.  RE: Assessing Guest Fees

    Community MVP
    Posted 09-18-2019 18:16
    Edited by Kameron Kidd 01-18-2024 14:09
    We charge everyone. :)
    One of our events we mail registrations to the attendee, We have 3 admission fees,
    Two early bird fees. The fee is to cover mailing, printing and cvent,

    For each guest we charge $10. That cover's some printing and cvent fees,

    We use use 2 admission items, One is for the attendee and the other guest.
    We do that because guests can only register for specific sessions.
    F&B is usually a separate event as not all attendees register for meals.
    Guests are also a different registration type,

    We call the $10 guest fee an administrative fee. Non-refundable.
    We have had no push back at all.

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    Steven Schlossman
    Jack of all trades. Master of none.
    BMW Car Club of America
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  • 3.  RE: Assessing Guest Fees

    Posted 09-19-2019 15:48
    Yes, our attendees have the option to register and pay for a guest to attend with them to particular parts of the event. We have two different fee structures. We have one which is our standard guest registration which includes all the evening events, keynote speaker and our final Signature event and we charge the attendees $395 early bird and $495 after early bird. Then we also provide a guest registration fee for those attendees that would like to bring their guest to our Signature event only and we charge $250 for that. We found that charging these fees helps with the cost of the event. Also we have not heard any complaints regarding the guest fees and it also doesn't deter them from attending.

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    Sandi Konietzka
    Event Project Manager II
    Fidelity Information Services, LLC (FIS)
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  • 4.  RE: Assessing Guest Fees

    Community MVP
    Posted 09-19-2019 16:19
    And I'll add, by charging a fee people are less likely to be a no show. If someone pays even $10, there is a commitment to show up.

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    Steven Schlossman
    Jack of all trades. Master of none.
    BMW Car Club of America
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