GM Hosts 500 at Spa in Arizona

[texastoast]

Your tax dollars at work. :grr:

GM Hosts Clients At Arizona Spa
Five-Hundred Clients To Go On GM's Dime

POSTED: Thursday, May 7, 2009
UPDATED: 5:33 pm EDT May 7, 2009

DETROIT -- General Motors has plans to host a spa retreat for its top clients and many critics are questioning it.

The company is paying for airfare and lodging for more than 500 people who will be staying at the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort and Spa in Arizona.

General Motor's spokesman Terry Rhadigan said the getaway is to show off its 2010 vehicles and said it is scaled back from previous years.

Full story at link

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/19395144/detail.html

[angstlessk]

1. clients...not ceo's..these are people who spend big bucks on fleets of vehicles

shit...:wtf:...are they to send them to nissan to wine and dine them?

[babylonsister]

3. Airfare and lodging, and spa facilities? Do they have to be bought

to get their business? How about a nice dinner out?

[babylonsister]

2. How many people did they lay off? How much fed. money did they

get? Rec'd for more eyes. :grr:

[Rabrrrrrr]

9. And if they didn't advertise or show their wares to people who buy cars by the tens of thousands,

how many more employees will they lay off?

Jesus.

[babylonsister]

10. Why should that include airfare and hotels? In AZ? Do they also have

to ship the cars in? Given the economic realities in this country, especially for car manufacturers, I do think this could have been handled better.

[Rabrrrrrr]

12. Okay then, business god - riddle me this: how else do they get the buyers to see their products

in a fashion that is timely enough that GM can gets its orders done for the next year so it can have some expectation of how many cars it needs to make?

Seriously, you're obviously the business major around here, so please enlighten us what the better solution is.

Maybe just a bulk-rate mailing of a brochure and an order form?

"Dear CEO of Hertz rent-a-car - you may already be a winner! Try our product inside! If you order 200,000 we'll include a free air freshener that's yours to keep even if you return the cars"

:eyes:

[babylonsister]

16. No, snarky, but you obviously don't have a problem with this. I'm not

alone in thinking this is over-the-top though, and I'm not feeling too charitable in making excuses, unlike yourself. Maybe holding this event in MI would have been more cost-effective instead of shipping 150 cars to AZ, plus all the other bells and whistles? Oh, yea, minus the golf fees. How cheap of them.

Nah, the sky's the limit despite the fact they're teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. :eyes:


CHANDLER, Ariz. — Just weeks before a deadline that could send it into bankruptcy, General Motors is entertaining 500 of its biggest customers at a luxury spa and golf course in Arizona.

GM, (GM) which has borrowed $15.4 billion from the U.S. government in the past six months, shipped in 150 cars and trucks to the event this week at the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort & Spa, and paid for airfare and hotel lodging for 90% of the guests.

snip//

President Obama has called for "shared sacrifice" among all of GM's stakeholders.

"I would hope that GM management would spend our financial dollars wisely, and in a manner that would be certainly appropriate in the taxpayer's minds," says Jack Dickinson, president of GM retiree group OverTheHillCarPeople.com. White-collar retirees lost health care benefits at the start of 2009. "I would hope that our management has the foresight to stay away from things that would project a negative image with the public."

GM, Chrysler and Ford executives were harshly criticized last fall for flying on private jets to Washington to ask for government aid. Leslie Paige of Citizens Against Government Waste says it's clear GM didn't learn from that.

"GM has a tin ear to these things," she says. "There shouldn't be any wining and dining right now. They took taxpayer money. If you're going to do that, you need to make some very public displays that you get that the taxpayers are part owners of the company now."

Tom Donaldson, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, says GM and other companies accepting government aid should be working hard to stay under the radar.

"Even legitimate functions that help sales, that create partnerships, that are not over the top and luxury, they are almost out of bounds from the public standpoint," Donaldson says.

GM says the Treasury wasn't consulted on the event, nor would it ask for permission. The Treasury has said it doesn't want to interfere with GM's day-to-day operations.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2009-05-06-resorts-fleet-gm_N.htm

[Rabrrrrrr]

18. Two things: first, all that money they are spending is being injected straight into the economy,

providing a lot of jobs for the cooks, cleaners, and other staff at the spa.

Why do you want them all to lose their jobs?

2) what's the difference between shipping all the cars to Michigan and shipping to Michigan? Oh, that's right, in your fictionalized little perfect world, every car is already in Michigan, within a few feet of GM headquarters, and all housing and airfare to Michigan is also magically free.

:eyes:

Fucking hell.

You must be a professor of business, since you understand it so perfectly.

[babylonsister]

22. What industry are you involved in that you're so wedded to this?

And FOR THE RECORD, please supply a link about everyone who will lose their job if this doesn't happen, and why now the hotel staff is pertinent? Fucking hell back at ya.

I distinctly remember the airlines lowering expectations after 9/ll. That included entertaining.

But cars RULE! Sure.

[Rabrrrrrr]

23. I am in no industry. I just beleve in thinking through things

and not knee-jerk reacting like an imbecile.

And as I thought, you don't care about the hotel staff. You're worried about the economy, and yet you broadhandedly dismiss all hotel workers as irrelevant.

Okay.

If we applied your silliness to all businesses (that they shouldn't entertain, shouldn't spend money on advertising and wooing customers, and so forth), then much of the hospitality industry would disappear, and millions would be out of work.

All that money that GM is spending on this trip is money that being injected directly into the pockets of the people who work at the airlines and the spa and the car shipping companies and whatever places are being touched by this. That's jobs being saved, and that's money helping the economy.

What should GM do? Just hold on to that money and let it sit? Or give it to the CEO as a bonus, where it just sit and stimulate nothing?

You need to look at the larger, more holistic picture, and not just sit in the bile of your anti-corporate economics-ignorant puddle of knee-jerk self-righteous wrath.

[angstlessk]

13. sure..just tweak their noses till they say ....SUPER MAN...and they are sure to purchase

a fleet of vehicles from GM!! wow...I like how YOU DO BIDNESS!!!

[Kokonoe]

15. It would be cheaper to ship the people to one place,

Than ship the cars to each person. Why not AZ.

[babylonsister]

17. Why not start in Michigan? Isn't that where the cars are? nt

[Rabrrrrrr]

19. No, really, you're right - every car made in America is mdae in Detroit.

Even if the factory is in Mexico or Tennessee or Wisconsin, it's actually made in Detroit.

Do you even listen to yourself?

[babylonsister]

20. Are they in Arizona? Is that why they are shipping them in?

Do you even listen to yourself?

[Rabrrrrrr]

21. Yes, I do listen to myself. Which is why my posts tend to make a lot of sense.

Now, as to your dilemma, what I did was something we call a "rhetorical device". You made the implication that every car is made in Michigan; instead of me saying "no, they aren't", I went to the side of absurdity to point out that, according to your declarative statement, that would mean that factories in, for example, Tennessee, are actually in Michigan. Get it? It's a little more clever of a device that leads, hopefully, to inspiring thinking in the one to whom it is said.


For you see, no matter where an event is held, cars have to be shipped from all over the country and from outside the country, because cars are made all over the country and in other countries. Whether you host the even in Michigan or in Arizona, you're still shipping cars. And no matter where you hold it, some cars get shipped a small distance, some a large distance.

See - that's just logic and math and physical reality.

There is no magic in Michigan that can call all cars "home" for free. There are no magical free hotels there. There are no magical free airline trips there.

[joeybee12]

4. Calm down...these sorts of things are planned at least 2 years in advance...

...and if they cancel now, they still have to pay cancelation damages which are pretty damn close to what it would cost to just go ahead and still hold the dang thing.

[texastoast]

5. Hmm. When I cancel a big affair like this

I usually can do it and get a full refund so long as I'm a month ahead of time.

[Rabrrrrrr]

8. You host a lot of multiple-day big affairs for 500 people at a shot

and cancel them just a month or so ahead of time and get complete refunds from the hotel/spas, airlines, and whatnot?

I highly doubt it.

Highly, highly, highly doubt it.

[texastoast]

24. My dear, I can guarantee you

That I have done organized big expense account fests like this several times in my long career, but at the time I was doing it, airfares were refundable with a 24-hour cancellation notice. My, times have changed.

However, I've had to cancel only one gathering that I can recall. You get a cancellation policy as part of your contract with a venue. Terms in such a contract vary, but generally, there is always, always a cancellation clause that will allow the host to get the vast majority of its money back as long as notice is given within a reasonable time so that the venue can rebook.

Now, if GM made a lousy contract, it wouldn't surprise me. After all, these are the idiots who brought us the Hummer after getting part of Bush's $12B clean transportation development grant. They are also the further idiots who bought freaking Daewoo and slapped the USA Chevrolay name on some of the crappiest small cars in the world instead of buckling down and spending that Bush money for something they could be proud of.

And you and I are paying for that continued stupidity.

[blondeatlast]

7. Yeah, coz nothing wins customers like bad PR and bad timing.

:eyes:

[Rabrrrrrr]

6. So?

Totally irrelevant.

Making huge issues out of utterly irrelevant shit like this is why liberals look like such fucking jackasses sometimes.

[Canuckistanian]

11. A free spa for 500 - and that's "scaled back"?

No wonder GM is on the brink.

[angstlessk]

14. for fucks sake..the convention and travel industry should just shut the fuck down...since

no corporate entity of any kind should entertain any person or persons..no matter how important they might be to the continued health of the company...EVAH...

WHY DO DEMOCRATS HATE ENTERTAINMENT...EXCEPT SEX THEY HAVE PERSONALLY?

[texastoast]

25. I just think they should pay for their own love fests

And not one fucking fuck's penny of my tax dollars should fucking fuck pay for it. I'd much rather we be spending on fucking fuck education or health care.