Re: Shabbat Pre-Conference
From: Jay Sage, Conference Co-Chair (JayIAJGS2019.org)
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2019 20:57:06 -0800 (PST)

Will the hotel be able to provide a regular room key rather than an electronic card key?

The hotel rooms all have electronic keys. However, hotel staff can help guests enter hotel rooms. We have confirmed that the stairways can be accessed (in and out), and doors will be propped open as needed to ensure access to stairwells.

Will we be able to book a room on the lower floors and have that be guaranteed?

Yes. You will need to add this to the notes in the hotel reservation when booking with the hotel. After you book a room, I would recommend that you make a follow-up call or send an email message to the hotel to make sure that the request is in your record.

Note, however, that guest rooms start only on the floors above the meeting areas, on something like the 5th floor.

Will there be Shabbat meals available on Friday night and Saturday lunch?

We have not made any plans for this. Nor have we made any decision.

The conference does not have any rooms reserved for Friday evening, but our planner thinks that the hotel could probably provide a room if we wanted to have a Friday night dinner.

We do have rooms available on Saturday and could hold a lunch and/or dinner.

Realistically, making plans for any such events requires that someone step forward to organize them.

Another problem is that the kosher caterer that works through the hotel seems to be even more exorbitantly expensive than the usual kosher caterer, so the price of the meals could discourage people from signing up.

This might be a good topic to discuss in the Facebook KosherSIG group, where other conference attendees for whom this is an issue congregate.

Jay Sage
Co-Chair, IAJGS 2019 Conference, Cleveland, Ohio
Jay [at] iajgs2019.org

Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.