Why to Stay at the Conference Hotel

Friends of SGCI, we need your help! Make your room registration at the Sheraton Convention Center, Miramar Convention District, our conference hotel.

We want to see you all at our annual conference and, to be frank, we need more people to stay at the conference hotel. We understand this may be a financial burden too large for some, but if you are able to seek institutional support or access funds to book rooms at the Sheraton Convention Center, please consider staying with us. We are contractually obligated to fill a room block at the hotel. If we do not meet this requirement, SGCI will be suffer attrition charges. Our Puertográfico Steering Committee and the board have been working to reduce costs for this conference in any way that we can. We need the assistance of our membership, too!

Sheraton Puerto Rico Room Options:

  • Two or Three to a Room: $189/night: Single bed bedrooms accommodate up to 2 adults in a king size bed. A rollaway bed may be requested and is confirmed upon availability with an additional cost of $35.00 per night may accommodate two additional adults. There is no additional cost for triple or quadruple occupancy.
  • Four to a room: $189/night: Double bedrooms accommodate up to 4 adults in two double beds. Due to security reasons, this room category does not fit additional adults.
  • Please note: These room rates are only available until March 6, 2020, or until the room block is full.

Why did we sign contracts requiring such large numbers of rooms?

The hotel contract for San Juan, Puerto Rico was negotiated years ago when we were seeing higher attendance at conferences. To acquire the conference space needed to host large numbers attendees and keep it as affordable as possible, we had to say that we would fill a certain number of rooms each night. We are obligated to meet these requirements and there are no ways around them.

What is SGCI doing to try to prevent a financial loss on this conference?

We have carefully reviewed our past practices and have committed to reducing spending on other aspects of the conference so that we can continue to provide high quality programing at a more affordable cost to our attendees. For example, we have recently:

  • Incorporated conference registration into our website to eliminate third party expenses for this and future conferences.
  • Are using a conference app to eliminate high printing costs
  • Are no longer utilizing a conference coordinator to organize our conferences; this conference is completely volunteer-based!
  • The number of volunteer waivers has been drastically reduced in an effort to lower registration costs for everyone. Prior conferences distributed full waivers readily, which only harmed our finances.

Your board and our Puertográfico steering committee are giving their time to SGCI to help the organization. We hear your concerns and we are actively seeking solutions. We hope that you will help us, too.

How are we changing so that we can more ahead more wisely?

We are contracted with hotels and conference spaces for Puerto Rico 2020 and Providence 2021. The host institutions in both of these cities were not able to give us space in their institutions to accommodate our attendance. As we solicit and review future conference proposals, we are looking to take SGCI back to its roots so that we can keep costs low for our members while providing a enriched conferences for everyone.

If we want to ensure that SGCI can run as we desire, we need to do everything we can to regain financial stability. Matching our income to our expenses on this conference and moving ahead with positive numbers means that we can do more next year to reduce costs for our members and allocate funds to help SGCI meet its mission.

The board asks you now for your help in encouraging your friends, colleagues, and students to join us in San Juan for Puertográfico! On-site registration is always welcome, of course. We hope to see all of your familiar faces and plenty of new ones in April!

With best wishes and gratitude for all that each of you do for SGC International,
Charles Beneke
President, SGC International

Click here to go to the Sheraton Convention Center room block