Need to find out more about the destination you are planning to hold your next meeting in? Do you want to put your mind at ease or simple get some unbiased advice form a peer, who has met at the destination you are considering?

Mark Holland of the Mineral Law Foundation shares his experience:
“I attended a luncheon roundtable discussion at the 2013 IMEX meeting in Las Vegas.  Several ICCA people were there helping to lead the groups.  Having never really heard of ICCA, I was very curious to see what they had to say.  Among the many gems of wisdom was a mention of their website Portal, which allows association planners to query other association planners about a wide range of topics.


My group had been a year into planning a five-day intensive educational course in Istanbul for 85 people from 35 different countries.  And from all the news reports, the protests in the city were only growing in strength and numbers.  Especially around the Taksim Square area, located in direct proximity to our headquarters hotel.  So we were concerned, to say the least.  And we even considered invoking the civil unrest clause in the force majeure provision of our contract.

So the day I returned from IMEX, I hopped on ICCA’s website and signed up for access to the Portal.  Once I was approved, I sent out a query to anyone who had recently run a conference in Istanbul, asking for any feedback they had on the current situation.  Within three days, I had five detailed responses.  And all of them were basically – no worries.  These wonderful people from around the world had taken the time to answer my email, putting my fears to rest.

We ran the conference this past March, and although protests were still in progress, they did not impact our meeting in the least.  So a big thank you to ICCA for offering this excellent resource, and also to those planners who actually responded to pleas for information.


Mark Holland
Assocaite Director
Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation”