Organizing In-Person CAB Meeting: Budget Input Needed ✈️ or 🚗?

Rebecca Grossman · 2025-08-01 21:41:45.42414+00

Hi all - I've been asked to organize an in person CAB meeting this fall - like in less than 2 months :slightly_smiling_face:. It will be a stand alone meeting. The only other time we all met in person was in Q1 at our annual user conference. I am putting together a budget and wondering if I need to cover flights and getting people to the venue - or only costs once they arrive at the venue. We will likely be in Scottsdale, AZ as very nice resort - but not the Phoenician, they were so hard to work with and had no availability. Please use emoji :airplane: if I should pay for flights, and :car: if it's ok to ask the customer to pay for transportation. Thank you!

Organizing In-Person CAB Meeting: Budget Input Needed ✈️ or 🚗? | CMAweekly Customer Marketing and Advocacy Slack

7 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Lauren Turner
·
Always ask for everything you want and then pare down as necessary. So yes, I’d definitely recommend including transportation, flight and hotel in your budget. A nice gift basket for their rooms, too, as well as a fun group activity for after the meeting (or the evening before).
❤️1
➕1
Rebecca Grossman
·
My boss thinks we do not need to pay for flights - so I did ask for it, but wondering if others typically pay for it or not.
Lauren Stefano
·
We offered it but didn't make it automatic. When we announced the meeting, I included a line that said I'm able to help with travel expenses, please contact me for more info. As it turned out there was 100% overlap between customers without their own travel budget and customers whose legal teams wouldn't allow them to accept our offer, so we didn't end up paying for anyone's travel, but I think we still got some brownie points for offering. Of course we paid for everything on-site during the meeting.
👍2
Lisa Wilberding
·
We have many CAB members that can't accept the paid travel from us. We don't pay for travel unless they ask, then we do. For instance, I have five attending (out of 12) next month in NYC and we're paying for two of them who requested it. A few are local so that helped!
👍3
Wendy Stanton
·
We did the same as Lisa stated~only paid for those that asked since many cannot accept the paid travel. We did pay for everything else upon arrival.
👍2
Aunalisa Arellano
·
I didn't work in an industry with customers who could not accept travel, and most expected us to cover it, so we did. This was for a one in-person meeting per year.
👍1
Maria Braune
·
Hey Rebecca Grossman! We pay for both flights and hotel + then send a UBER voucher that they can use for any other travel expenses. We have a fun event before our welcome dinner followed by our meeting the next day. We have been lucky to keep our budget right around 40k with about 11 members. Our first year (about two years ago) we were able to get folks to pay their own way but then our CEO said he would provide $$ for us to pay.
👍1

Lauren Turner
·
Always ask for everything you want and then pare down as necessary. So yes, I’d definitely recommend including transportation, flight and hotel in your budget. A nice gift basket for their rooms, too, as well as a fun group activity for after the meeting (or the evening before).
❤️1
➕1
Rebecca Grossman
·
My boss thinks we do not need to pay for flights - so I did ask for it, but wondering if others typically pay for it or not.
Lauren Stefano
·
We offered it but didn't make it automatic. When we announced the meeting, I included a line that said I'm able to help with travel expenses, please contact me for more info. As it turned out there was 100% overlap between customers without their own travel budget and customers whose legal teams wouldn't allow them to accept our offer, so we didn't end up paying for anyone's travel, but I think we still got some brownie points for offering. Of course we paid for everything on-site during the meeting.
👍2
Lisa Wilberding
·
We have many CAB members that can't accept the paid travel from us. We don't pay for travel unless they ask, then we do. For instance, I have five attending (out of 12) next month in NYC and we're paying for two of them who requested it. A few are local so that helped!
👍3
Wendy Stanton
·
We did the same as Lisa stated~only paid for those that asked since many cannot accept the paid travel. We did pay for everything else upon arrival.
👍2
Aunalisa Arellano
·
I didn't work in an industry with customers who could not accept travel, and most expected us to cover it, so we did. This was for a one in-person meeting per year.
👍1
Maria Braune
·
Hey Rebecca Grossman! We pay for both flights and hotel + then send a UBER voucher that they can use for any other travel expenses. We have a fun event before our welcome dinner followed by our meeting the next day. We have been lucky to keep our budget right around 40k with about 11 members. Our first year (about two years ago) we were able to get folks to pay their own way but then our CEO said he would provide $$ for us to pay.
👍1