Arisia settles cancellation fees with Westin and Aloft hotels

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Boston, MA, December 30, 2019 -- Today, Arisia Inc. signed agreements with the Westin Boston Waterfront and Aloft Boston Seaport District hotels to settle the charges from our cancellation of the hotel contracts for Arisia 2019, held this past January 18-21. Under the terms of these agreements, the hotels have waived a total of approximately $150,000 in cancellation fees and anticipated attrition charges, provided that Arisia makes a residual $44,486.23 payment by March 15, 2020. Arisia and the Westin Boston Waterfront also signed contracts for the 2022 and 2023 events. The terms of these contracts are broadly similar to the terms in place for the 2020 and 2021 contracts (and don’t contain attrition clauses) and we are confident that it will be possible to run great events under these contracts.

This settlement does not get us out of the woods. We have already paid tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and we don’t have the cash on hand to cover the $44,000 payment. We have launched a fundraising campaign at https://corp.arisia.org/Donations to cover this amount. A small group of anonymous donors will be matching donations to this campaign. We are hopeful that with your help we will be able to hold great conventions and continue our charitable purpose. Thank you particularly to everyone who has offered their support already.

We still have other issues to address, at least as serious as this one. We have much more work to do on our incident response process, our volunteer experience, and generally on fostering the affirmative culture we would like to see at Arisia. We thank you for your support here as well.

Arisia is looking forward to returning to the Westin and Aloft this coming January and for years to come, and we hope you will join us.

Press contact: corpcomms@arisia.org

About Arisia:
Founded in 1989, Arisia Inc runs the largest volunteer-run general interest science fiction convention in New England. Arisia 2020, our 31st convention, will be held January 17-20, 2020 at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel, with the Aloft Boston Seaport District providing overflow guest rooms. For more information visit www.arisia.org.

###