Tim

Seed your membership and exhibitor directories with false names connected to a staff member’s home address or some permutation of the office’s address, so you’ll know if someone is communicating with your attendees or exhibitors without your knowledge.

Plug your meeting’s name into some search engines. If that event pops up on someone else’s Web site and appears to affiliate your organization with that site, you have another trail to follow.

Send a “cease and desist” letter, and follow up with a threat of taking legal action, if necessary. One way is to claim “tortious interference” of a contractual relationship between your group and the hotel with which you contracted the housing block.

Register trademarks for show names, conference names, and organization names. To learn more, go to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Web site: http://www.uspto.gov.

Put an audit clause in your contract. The clause should ensure that the organization gets credit for all group attendees, regardless of the rate they paid.

Create a value for staying inside the block. Educate attendees and exhibitors about the importance of staying inside the block, then add an incentive, preferably in hard dollars.

Tie registration and housing together in some way. Take away the option of going outside the block by providing a discount in the meeting registration to those who do the housing through you. Then if the poachers come, who cares? The attendees’ housing is already spoken for.