In Praise of our MPI THCC Supplier Members

One of the great things about being board president is getting to plan our board of directors annual and mid-year retreats.

Back in June, for our first retreat together as a board, I reached out to one of my fellow board members, Andrea Howard with Visit Salado. After touring the Inn on the Creek B&B, and a great offer from Visit Salado, we selected this beautiful and serene location and had a fun and successful retreat. It was a good opportunity for our chapter leaders to get to know each other and see what Salado has to offer – this is a great benefit not just for the city but for the venue as well.

Recently I have enlisted the help of yet ANOTHER board member, LaVita Miller – meeting planner with Jewell Global Meetings & Events and we have been looking at two destinations that have submitted outstanding “above and beyond” bids for our January mid-year retreat, the new Margaritaville Resort in Conroe/Visit Conroe CVB as well as the new Carter Creek Winery & Resort in Johnson City. Both of these venues have made great offers and both facilities are fun, unique and have guest rooms that are brand new. Regarding Margaritaville, all of the guestrooms are one-bedroom suites with balconies and a lot of extra room to enjoy your visit. At the Carter Creek Winery & Resort, all of the rooms are one-bedroom villas and feature outdoor porches to enjoy.

We’re still in the process of determining the ultimate choice but it has reminded me of how amazing our supplier members are, and how helpful it is to the chapter when they step up to the plate and bid on our board retreats, as well as our monthly luncheons, dinners, banquets, board meetings and networking socials. From a supplier standpoint, we can really tell that conference and meeting related businesses are “back” due to the amount of new members we have joining the chapter every month, which bodes really well for Austin, San Antonio and the surrounding areas, as well as the meetings industry in general. We’ve all heard a lot in the past with regards to “Buy MPI,'' which is so important to our long term supplier members, and shows our new supplier members that we follow that philosophy.

It has been amazing to see how each month of this calendar year our in person attendance at events has grown each time we get together, and shows no signs of slowing down! If you haven’t been to an in person event yet, or it's been a long time since you have, please know that we miss you and cannot wait to connect with you, face to face, in the coming weeks at one of our MPI THCC events. Be sure to visit the event calendar on the website and RSVP for the next event, and we will see you soon! A BIG thank you to our MPI THCC suppliers for ALL THAT YOU DO!!!