Thread by @JonahLupton

Today I spoke with 10 different hotels in Florida including Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Tampa.

Every property I'm talking to either has insane room rates or no event space available or event space that's too small for 500+ people.

Please read 👇🏽👇🏽

https://twitter.com/JonahLupton/status/1409286467692675076

Since I'm not a professional event planner I just hired one to help me out.

Don't worry, this won't change any of the event costs or ticket prices -- she actually gets paid by the hotel as a "finders fee or commission" for bringing them our business.

After spending most of today on the phone, I'm less confident we'll be able to do this in Miami. Even if one of the nicer hotels has the available event space for us (and most don't), the room rates are $450+ per night at most places and nobody is doing discounts over 10%.

Even the Hard Rock in Hollywood said the best they could do is 150 rooms blocked off at a 10-15% discount and that's after paying a ton of money for the event space with food & beverage.

After talking with the event planner for the past 30 minutes we're going to keep looking in Miami but when we submit the RFPs on Wednesday we're going to include properties in Tampa, Charlotte, Nashville and Dallas.

I was excited to do this in Miami but my goal is bringing together as many people as possible. Even though many of us can afford $450+ per night at Fontainebleau I'm worried that it would eliminate a lot of great people who need to be more budget conscious.

Even though doing this event on the beach would have been amazing, I'm not sure it's worth paying twice as much for everything.

If I can figure out a way to do this event at a beachfront hotel then by all means that's what I'll do but I need to leave other options open.

I have a feeling that most people are coming for the speakers, networking and good times more than the beach.

I'm still waiting for calls back from Hard Rock in Tampa, Diplomat in Fort Lauderdale and Margaritaville in Hollywood Beach.

I'll send out an update in a few days once I know more but please don't book any plane tickets to Miami for Columbus Day weekend because I can't guarantee that's where we'll be.

If anyone knows of any great properties in some of the other cities I mentioned please let me know.