"We are looking to head into a new arena for sponsorships: the hotel guest room key cards. Could anyone offer any expertise or lessons learned about this? What was the cost involved; what did you charge for the sponsorship; what were the demographics of the group you did this for?"
Hillary Hanson, Alliance for Children and Families, Milwaukee, WI
"In our experience, this is a highly desirable sponsorship for companies with deep pockets. The issue is that many hotels now recognize that key cards can be a major revenue source and they charge accordingly. It is commonplace for hotels to sell sponsored key cards to local businesses (department stores, cineplexes, local theme parks, etc.). Hotels often make this an 'exclusive,' i.e., the cards must be purchased through the hotel, and cost can be $2-$4 per card.
"In the past, we had one HQ hotel put so many restrictions on what the hotel would allow on the key cards that the whole deal fell apart—it irritated the sponsor, and cost us a lot of money because the sponsor spent the money elsewhere. Each hotel handles key cards differently, and it can become a huge amount of work to manage if you are a citywide show. For large or small shows, what we do is include a provision during contract negotiations that we must approve who provides the key cards during our stay—we don't prohibit the hotels from honoring preexisting contracts or seeking local sponsors if no exhibitor (or non-exhibitor) steps up while we are in town. We also control door drops the same way. We charge a sponsorship fee, and then allow the sponsor to negotiate
directly with the hotel(s).
"Keep in mind that the cost to the sponsor, over and above the sponsorship fee itself, can be huge. If you follow our model, the sponsor is also doing all the work, so you should not get too greedy about the sponsorship fee or you won't have any takers."
Tony Maiorino
Scherago International, New York, NY
"I worked for many years at a 'big chain' hotel. When I first started, it was quite common to see special key cards during large conventions. However, we suddenly stopped allowing it. I was told it was due to the new policies of our umbrella company. To meet our standards, in case we were shopped/audited, we could only select from three different key cards, and they all represented our brand and our umbrella company. If we strayed from that, we would lose points on that part of the audit. We were told to explain to our clients requesting this that we were no longer permitted to change our key cards."
Maritza Santiago