08-30-16 Personnel and Finance - Laserfiche WebLink

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Our goal is to have a food and beverage profit margin of thirty percent (30 %), and the food and beverage department continues to be competitive in the market. Right now we are at a forty - three percent (43%) food and beverage margin. We want to increase bookings for future years. Presently we have events on the books through 2018, and right now we are very excited to say we have several events that we're working through 2020. We have three (3) events that we are working for multi -year contracts. One (1) being the Masons for a three (3) year commitment, and for First Robotics, which brings in about 2200 students, and that would be a'four (4) year commitment. We also want to create partnership opportunities for self - promoted events by partnering with local event organizers such as Jazzfest, second star theater, Princess for a Day, and Meet me on the Island with the Museum of Art. 2017 goals and challenges look a lot like 2016's. Our focus remains to achieve a valuable presence in the convention industry, so we need trade show opportunities with Visit South Bend and Mishawaka. Century Center continues to work closely with the CVB by participating in those fans, the industry trade shows, and the blitzes. So we do join with Visit South Bend and Mishawaka to attend trade shows and to blitz Indianapolis or other parts of the region including Chicago, but we're doing that mostly in Indiana right now. Increase revenue every year and decrease net loss by controlling expenses and continued focus on increased sales. Increase booking for future years, that is another one that will be ongoing as we move forward, we continue the effort to the CVB as well as our own marketing initiatives. Our sales team works closely with the CVB but we also do our own research in trying to get groups into South Bend. Continuing to achieve the food and beverage profit of thirty percent (30 %) which is in our contract. We will continue to monitor the market and remain competitive in pricing while controlling expenses without sacrificing the quality. Increase the number of events with sleeping rooms by focusing on our sales efforts on conventions and multi -day meetings. Some of the challenges that we see for 2017 are limited hotel rooms downtown until closer to August. With the addition of Courtyard by Marriot and the ALOFT scheduled to open, it will offer us the opportunity to solicit the larger pieces of business that need hotel rooms. Since we've been here, there are about five (5) conventions that have come to us wanting to be here and we just cannot host them. The addition of the hotel rooms, two - hundred and ninety -one (291) rooms downtown to six - hundred and ninety -four (694) if we include the Residence Inn, will give us the opportunity to host larger events. The other challenge we have is the maintenance of a forty (40) year old building. We have done a lot of improvements to the building with the guaranteed energy savings project that we completed on July 30th. We're excited about our ninety (90) solar panels on our roof and we're looking at getting even more. We have already completed a thirty (30) year plan for maintenance on the building and right now we are thirty -eight percent (38 %) into that plan. Some of our key performance indicators are measurables that we have in our contract, which is to increase our hotel room nights, and to show the Hotel Motel Tax Board that we're doing our part to put heads in beads. Our net operating loss is always a goal of ours. If everything goes as planned, our rolling forecast for 2016 puts us under $1 million, which we haven't seen in a