The minutes from the Meeting held on 24 Jan 2018 to discuss the Sicoga Venue and additional notes exchanged in emails after the meeting are given below.

Attendees:
 
Servas Korea:
Ms. JungHee Park, Registrations
Ms. Annie Kim, Venue
 
Servas International:
Mr. Amir Levy, SI Registration
Ms. Gulsen Elyak, SI SICOGA Finance
Mr. Radha B. Radhakrishna, SI Treasurer
 
Absent:
 Servas Korea:
Mr. Seakeun Song (Gabriel), Finance 

The questions discussed and the decisions made are as follows:

Q1 - In case of someone wishing to stay for a day or two, how much will it cost for a single day including meals?

We decided that the logistics of this was too difficult.  We decided to charge each participant for the full stay.  After that, it is up to the participant to decide how long they wish to stay. 
 
 Decision: We should let everybody know that registration is possible only for the 7 nights and 8 days of the conference by paying the full participation fee.

Q2. Is there a possibility of someone to stay during the day and pay only for meals but not to have a room for the night? And if yes, how much it will cost them?

 In line with the answer for question 1, we decided that due to many logistic reasons unfortunately there will not be any ability to welcome visitors for a short visit or a daily stay.

Decision: Due to logistical reasons we will not provide the facility for day visits.

Q3. How far are some hotels or hostels and how much should cost a room there?

The nearest hotels are about 50 minutes away.  A two person room costs about $100 a day, or $700 a week.

Decision: Based on the gathered information - due to the high costs, and significant travel time - we definitely recommend to exclude this option. Instead, an effort will be made to arrange and find an economic option to have as many rooms as possible for 2 persons a room in the venue itself. Including an option of some reasonable extra fee from those who ask for a 2 person room.

Q4. Can we book rooms for a few days before and / or after the 13-20 October week of the meeting? How much will be the cost of a bed room for each night like that?

This required a discussion of how many people would need to come before the conference.  We identified two possible scenarios for people to come a day early � and needing accommodation on the 12th.

Scenario 1: There would be one to two Servas officers (and volunteers) coming early to the venue to work on the conference.

Decision: With respect to Scenario 1: we need to inquire if rooms may be available at the venue and arrange for them.  An alternative is to house them with a Servas host.

Action Point: Servas Korea will enquire about availability of one or two rooms at the venue for October 12, and if needed, October 11.

Scenario 2: Some of the people arriving for the conference may choose to come early � e.g., to acclimatize and get over jetlag.  Since the participation fee only covers the cost of stay during the conference, these costs will be met by the early arrivals from their own pocket.

With respect to Scenario 2: we considered three options.  (a) whether they could be housed with Servas hosts, or (b) whether they could book rooms at the venue or (c) whether they could book rooms at a hotel or hostel in Seoul.

Action Point:  With respect to Option (a) of Scenario 2, we decided that Servas Korea will appoint a helper who will take on the role of Hosting coordinator.  Since it is likely that there will be many requests for hosting (that might overwhelm individual hosts), all hosting requests must go through the hosting coordinator who will make the best allocation based on options available.  Host receiving requests should be asked to forward the requests they receive to the hosting coordinator who will make the final allocation decisions.  It is specially important that all the local hosts be informed not to take direct action in offering to host but to forward requests to the hosting coordinator to avoid double bookings and confusion.

Follow up information from Servas Korea:

With respect to Option (a), Servas Korea has issued a request to hosts living in Seoul and Gyunggi Province (near Seoul) how many of them are available for welcoming participants from abroad. Please wait until we collect the results.

With respect to Option (b), Servas Korea has indicated that it is possible for those arriving early to stay at the venue. For this, Servas Korea (venue coordinator?) must to be contacted in advance to make the reservation.

With respect to Option (c), it is recommended that participants who prefer to stay at a hotel should consider the following hotels as all of them are located near metro line #5 which directly transports them to the venue without transferring.

1. Lotte City Hotels Mapo

  www.lottehotel.com/city/mapo/ko

2. Lotte City Hotels Gimpoairport

       www.lottehotel.com/city/gimpoairport/ko

3. Shillastay Mapo

       www.shillastay.com/mapo/

4. HI SEOUL YOUTH  HOSTEL

          hiseoulyh.com/

 Follow up comment from Amir:

Amir offered to help the host coordinator who is appointed, if any support is needed.

Follow up comment from Radha:

Should we add instructions on the registration website to inform participants that those looking for hosting in Korea before or after the conference should write to the hosting coordinator instead of contacting the hosts directly?

Q5. Can you estimate how many local Korean helpers will be needed to work at the venue site during the conference week? Will 5 volunteers be enough? It will help us to estimate the total number of accepted participants.

Ms. Park suggested that based on their analysis, it was felt that there would be a need for a maximum of 10 helpers around the clock (24/7) for all the activities.  A question was raised if this was on top of the key people already working on the project, who would also be there. A second question raised was whether we need 10 people all the time or only during activity surges; and we can make do with fewer people at other times (reducing the number of 24/7 people needed).

Action Point: Servas Korea will do additional analysis before a final decision is agreed upon on the number of volunteers needed.  

Follow up information from Servas Korea:

Servas Korea has decided we need 7 people for the whole period. These people includes the key people, so no more than 7. We will also have some backup people who will counterpart in case of the key people’TnTiHtMleFt/span>s absence. We will manage this matter on our own.

On the first day when we need lots of people to process the registration, we will ask the local Servas Koreans to come and work.

Q6. How many rooms of different sizes are available and already booked?

The following information on room availability was made available which is recorded in the table below. This does not include some rooms that are booked but are planned to be cancelled (See additional information on that from Servas Korea below).

All the rooms are equipped with toilets and showers.  In-room toilets are not designed for wheelchairs but they are relatively spacious.  Undol rooms do not have beds, but they have heated floors and it is comfortable to sleep on the floors.  

Since the rooms are narrow, it was suggested that we should allot less people in each room than originally designed for.  Also, since there will be a lot of demand for 2 person rooms, we may allot only two persons a room in some of the rooms.  Actual allocation algorithms will be decided later based on these general guidelines.

Action Point:  It was decided that we need to fix an approximate headcount of conference attendees before making a decision on booking the additional rooms.  Ms. Park suggested that this should be done soon before the additional rooms available are gone. To discuss with Jonny and Penny on how many attendees to plan for, so that a decision may be made on the need for additional rooms. 

Follow up information from Servas Korea:

We have also booked two bedrooms for 2 persons, however, they are too luxurious compared to the rest of the rooms, so we are going to cancel them not to arouse any resentment from the other participants. This decision was made with the proposal from Penny and Jonny.

Although we signed a contract on this venue with the hostel, they promised to wait until the end of June when we can cancel the unnecessary rooms without any penalty. We guess we will have more correct information on the need of the rooms by that time when all the registration is over. We planned the budget with generosity, I mean, not so tightly, so using more rooms won’TnTiHtMleFt/span>t affect the whole budget.

This morning Mr. Choi, the national secretary of Servas Korea talked with the hostel and they said they will hold the rooms not booked yet for us until the end of June.

We would like to know how many couples attended the conference of New Zealand so that we can estimate the number of couples for this event, of course, it won’TnTiHtMleFt/span>t be the same case, we know.

Wrap-Up 

Many thanks to all for the meeting � specially to Ms. JungHee Park and to Ms. Annie Kim for staying up late despite all the Skype technical problems that delayed the meeting by 45 minutes.  In the future, we should do a technical check prior to the meeting to avoid these problems.  Also, apologies to Mr. ByungWan Choi and Mr. Kyuok  Kim, who were both invited to the meeting, but could not be connected because of technical problems.

Minutes taken by Radha B. Radhakrishna