Read more in this series here.

Once I’d decided on the hotel, I had to begin negotiations. It started, of course, with the hotel’s director of sales running our event through her risk management team. That took a while, time that I couldn’t begrudge them. They looked at information from other spanking parties and — I’m guessing — reached out to other hotels that host spanking parties, and after a few weeks they decided to move ahead with our contract.

I left work early one afternoon last year to go over to the hotel and meet with the director of sales. She was a pleasant woman who made me feel comfortable talking about a subject that isn’t necessarily comfortable to discuss with vanillas. I was fully open and honest with her about what we were doing, what we needed space for, how many rooms we’d probably need, and how much space we wanted. She showed me around the space and the rest of the hotel, went over meal options with me, gave me some ideas of how much the rooms would cost, and then told me she’d get back to me with a preliminary contract. This was in April of last year, and with Frolicon on the horizon and the fact that I was going to be putting cards in every single welcome bag to advertise GASP meant that I wanted the contract signed by May 1.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, for various reasons. There were some negotiations we had to do, some numbers we had to work around, and then some stuff the director of sales had to do on her end. We didn’t actually sign the contract until May 15 or so, and on that day our first deposit was due. Fortunately I’d already set up a business checking and business credit card account, because the LLC I formed to handle all GASP-related things had exactly $1000 to its name, money that I’d put in from my own account just so it wouldn’t be sitting empty and racking up fees. The deposits were, to put it mildly, a lot of money. We owed a total of four equal deposits, several thousand dollars each, at various times over the next few months. Our corporate card could handle the first one, but the second was a little worrying, not to mention the third and fourth. And on top of that, the deposits were not refundable — after all, the hotel was going to staff for us, provide space for us that they couldn’t rent to anyone else, and give us food and beverage service. So I understand why it’s not refundable.

Let me tell you a little something else about paying hotels for things: not only do you owe the sales tax (which in Alpharetta, GA, is 7.75%), but you also owe a 25% service fee on top of everything you pay. Our minimum with the Marriott was $25,000 spent on food and beverage alone, plus another few thousand in space rental fees. We figured out how to make that first number work with the meals we wanted to provide, and the space rental fees were relatively minor on top of that. My initial budget for GASP was not nearly as high as the total amount we spent on it, but fortunately we were able to make up the shortfall in ticket sales, which I’ll talk about in another posting.

Now, while we were negotiating all of this with the hotel, I was building the team I would eventually work on GASP with from my end. I’ll talk about that next week.