A TWO-YEAR charter signed on January 11 between leading Durban hotels and the International Convention Centre Durban (ICC) aims to facilitate the packaging of Durban as a conference destination, ensuring that the city retains its status as Southern Africa's leading convention city.
The terms of the charter are, amongst others, that participating hotels will provide transport to and from their respective hotels to the ICC and that they will offer one complimentary room for every 30 rooms occupied for group business.
Furthermore, the hotels will be committed to a commission structure of 10% to registered professional conference organisers.
The charter also states that hotels will offer rates for specific events in order to facilitate competitive bids and conference packages and that they will not increase their rates too higher than the publicly listed rate tariff for all ICC business.
ICC in turn agrees to facilitate joint marketing initiatives between participating members and to assist with regard to leverage on professional conference organisers.
Participating hotels are the Royal Hotel, Riverside Hotel, Quarters, Westville Hotel, Hilton Durban, Edward Hotel, Tropicana Hotel, Holiday Inn Elangeni Hotel and the Beverly Hills Hotel.
(Adele MacKenzie)
