If you are planning on traveling to any of the NACs (North American Cup events), Junior Olympics, or the Summer Nationals next season, then you need to know about Stay and Play and it’s potential impacts.
Stay and Play will roll out under a soft launch plan starting with the October NAC in Des Moines and has the potential for full launch by the Atlanta Summer Nationals.
The new "Stay and Play" program is being proposed as a program that will lead to long term benefits for the US Fencing community. Mention of this program has sparked debate on the Fencing.Net forums and has caused some to term it "Stay and Pay"
{sidebar id=1}US Fencing Executive Director Kurt Aichele spoke with Fencing.Net about the program and provided clarification to points already mentioned in their online release. Overall, the Stay and Play program has worked for the majority of participants for US Volleyball, so much so that the regional level (think sections for the USFA equivalent) are implementing the program.
Among the criticisms of Stay and Play within US Fencing are loss of hotel choice, increased real lodging costs, and the bad reputation that THS has earned in the community.
Hotel Choice?
One of the largest criticisms of the current arrangement with THS for hotel services is the lack of choice. While the host hotel is priced in at $129 to $159 per night, many fencers will choose an option such as a Best Western at $59/night or less.
Under the Stay and Play program (using the Des Moines NAC as an example), there are 6 properties under contract with THS ranging from $59/night to $149/night.
Under this plan, if fencers at a specific hotel are paying $79/night and another fencer negotiates a rate of $74/night with that hotel, then they can notify THS and THS will get all fencers at the hotel the $74/night rate.
This occurred during the last season with volleyball when one customer booked a room for $109/night when the THS rate was $139. The $109 rate was then extended to all 400 members who had already booked into the hotel.
Long Term Impacts
Drawing again on the experience of US Volleyball with Stay and Play Mr. Aichele reported on their success with the recent Volleyball nationals in Miami. Under Stay and Play the number of hotel room nights books that were directly attributable to US Volleyball went from 20,000 to 98,000 and from 6 hotels to 49. Volleyball showed Miami 5 times the economic impact, and received free venue space from Miami.
US Fencing is a smaller sport and is not able to get into the Tier 1 cities. With Stay and Play, larger cities are showing more interest. According to one source, Oklahoma City was not interested in putting in a bid for a USFA NAC, but when they heard that the USFA may be going to Stay and Play, they were interested.
What About that Waiver?
When US Fencing released information on Stay and Play on the official web site (www.usfencing.org), a sample waiver form was included. This waiver form included no options for anything other than the competitor staying with family. According to the USFA, that is a draft waiver form and that since they are doing a soft launch for the first events, the ability to obtain a waiver will be easy.
THS Customer Satisfaction
In talking about the attitudes of Fencing.Net members about THS, Kurt responded, "I questioned THS’s ability to deliver so that we made sure it was a soft rollout." He went on to state that he wants to see a 95% or higher satisfaction rating and that that rating is determined by taking the number of complaints and dividing that by the total number of customers served by THS at the event(s).
Improvements to the THS process also include double-confirmations of any hotel booking and any complaints will be copied to Kalle Weeks and Christine Simmons so both USFA Staff and the USFA President will be aware of the volume and type of complaints that exist with THS.
What is the Rollout Plan?
Currently, the rollout plan is to soft launch the Stay and Play program during the Des Moines, Kansas City, and Pittsburgh NACs. San Jose will probably also be rolled into the soft launch plan so that the USFA will have data from NACs in the east, west, and midwest as well as across all of the competitive groups (Div I, Div II/III, Junior, Veteran).
The plan is to then institute a hard rollout if the satisfaction rates and feedback are good. The key metrics looked at would be the customer satisfaction rates, ability to meet USFA member’s needs on property type, and matching costs.
Overall, Stay and Play is an experiment, but one in which the USFA membership should take part. The benefits of increased leverage and buying in larger blocks not only include reduced room rates for most, but also the ability to get NACs into better cities and not always in the fringe or less traveled areas of the country.
Fencing.Net will be tracking the effects of the soft rollout of Stay and Play over the next several NACs. THS has dug itself a pretty large hole with the fencing community and with their contract expiring in July, they need to show the community that they are up to the task of turning that perception around.
