NOTE - I would like to correct some misconceptions
& answer some common questions.
Q. Are we limited to only
certain hotels?
A. No - if there is a specific hotel you want,
HTG will work with you to try and secure rooms at the hotel of your
choice at a great price. Last
year, my son's team went to a tournament in Ottawa and we knew what
hotel we wanted. I had gotten a price from the hotel directly
before realizing that we were to use HTG - the price I got
from HTG was $10/night cheaper than the price that I had gotten from
the hotel directly! They are committed to working with you to
get the accommodations you want at the best possible price. (*In a
very few cases, HTG may not be able to provide certain hotels -
there are a couple of hotels that either do not work with agencies
or that HTG has put teams into a facility in the recent past and
they treated the teams so poorly that they cannot in good conscience put any of our
teams there.)
Q. Will it increase the
workload for the team manager?
A. Actually, it makes the team manager's job
easier - I have used them a couple of times now for my son's teams &
instead of having to spend time contacting a number of hotels for
availability and pricing, which was sometimes a very frustrating
job, HTG does all the work for you. After selecting your
hotel, HTG provides a booking link to send to the families & they
book their own room. There are no rooming lists or collecting
credit card information from your families (which I hated)!
It's easy for the team manager to log in & see who
still has yet to book so you can send reminders only to those
people.
Q. Why are you making us
book through HTG this year?
A. Tournament expenses have gone up in every area - ice
costs, participant gifts, trophies - due both to inflation & HST.
We do not want to cut anything from our tournament - we still want
to be able to provide every participant with a gift, keep longer
game lengths, with space in between to ensure that we run on time,
and provide nice prizes to both Champions & Finalists. HTG
provides a sponsorship to our association, which will help to allow
us to provide the same excellent tournament without passing along
100% of the increased costs to the teams.
If you have any other questions or concerns,
please contact me at
tournaments@forteriehockey.com
Thanks, Kathy
