Several top corporate organizations in Dallas have announced a solution to a perennial problem for event planners: microclimate controls in Dallas conference rooms.
(prHWY.com) August 14, 2012 - Seattle, WA -- Several top corporate organizations in Dallas have announced a solution to a perennial problem for event planners: microclimate controls in Dallas conference rooms.
This month, the Ross Perot Center off North Central Expressway said it had budgeted a major rehab that will install tiny heating and cooling jets in the floor of its conference rooms. Each attendee can control the air temperature in the immediate vicinity of his or her chair.
"Every year, the city draws millions to meetings and conferences in every conceivable industry, and every year we get complaints from attendees that the rooms are too hot or too cold," Marriott representative Dave McQueen reported. "The loudest grumbling comes from 'women of a certain age,' and that's all I'm going to say about that."
Each chair has its own temperature and air pressure control dials, a technician from the Perot Center explained. These controls are calibrated to communicate by wireless with small vents in the floor, but no farther from the chair than two feet. Thus, each participant in a meeting will enjoy her own
indoor microclimate, which may differ from what the person in the next seat desires by several degrees or more.
"You'd think convention attendees from Minnesota or Alaska would prefer it cooler and Texans would be more comfortable with warmer temperatures, but it doesn't work that way," Sabrina Watt, a local convention planner, says. "It's usually the opposite."
Tiffany Lampp, an event agent at one of the largest hotel chains in Dallas, explains: "Texans are used to A/C that's cranked up high in the hot summer months. Northerners are more used to just adapting to warmer weather. They're surprised and even uncomfortable when they walk into a Dallas conference room and find out how low we're used to turning the thermostat."
The technology is not inexpensive. Meeting room upgrades are expected to cost upwards of $137 per square foot, which can mean several hundred thousand for even a medium-sized Dallas conference room. To recoup that investment in a reasonable amount of time, event planners will have to hike rates for commercial room rental a significant amount.
"It may take a couple years," Watt said, "but once people figure out how appealing this is, we think they'll stop hesitating at the price tag."
Spokespersons for the Stanley Marcus Meeting Hall and the Gibby Haynes Conference Center said they would be licensing indoor microclimate technology for their spaces and starting to remodel later this year. "Dallas conference rooms will be the most comfortable in the U.S.," Chamber of Commerce president Carly Jackson said, "and we hope that will prove to be an even bigger draw for out-of-towners."
###