President’s Letter
January, 2015

We had such a fun evening at Benvenuto’s for our Annual Holiday Party! Our festive dinner wouldn’t have been complete without enjoying the music of Bill DeRenzo.

A special thanks to the Riverside Hotel for provided a beautiful venue and excellent dinner for our January meeting. The balcony with the view overlooking Ft Lauderdale was perfect for the social hour. A huge thanks to Rebecca Kendig-Rohrback, one of our new members and her staff for a terrific evening.

President Becky Reincke unfortunately was not able to join us as she had to be out of town for family reasons. After the introductions of our members and guests, our guest speakers, Fernando Harb from the Greater Ft Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau and Ellen Kennedy from Port Everglades gave a great presentation focusing on the growth of travel and tourism in Ft Lauderdale as well as the new developments at the Port and Airport.

During dinner the board announced the proposed slate of Officers and Directors for 2015. They are:

Voting for the new board will be held at the February dinner meeting and the Installation of Officers will be at the April 21st dinner at the Renaissance Hotel in Boca Raton.

We had the pleasure of inducting two new members during the dinner, Rebecca Kendig-Rohrback from the Riverside Hotel and Erica Gregory from Windridge Yacht Charters. Carlos Banks reviewed how everyone should make sure they have the correct current email address on Skal Internationals records and how to easily access the websites for Skal International, SIUSA and our clubs website. A hand out of instructions for accessing the websites was given to all members and will be emailed to everyone.

Your Board of Directors continues to be focused on increasing our membership and we ask that you contact industry friends and invite them to our meetings. If we can bring in 4 or more new members by April, we will have met all of the provisions to be nominated for Skal International Club of the Year. As you remember, we were voted the number 2 Skal Club of the Year in 2010.

Our February 17th dinner meeting will be at the Delray Sands Resort in Highland Beach, the March 17th dinner meeting will be at the West Palm Beach Marriott Hotel and will include a Travel and Tourism Industry update from Jorge Pesquera, President of Discover Palm Beach

Your board is making every effort to plan to have interesting topics of discussion at future meetings. Should you have a topic or guest that you would like to include in our consideration, please contact Dick Stafford, rwstaff@bellsouth.net or Becky Reincke, becky.reincke@otodevelopment.com with the necessary information. Don't forget to let your Board of Directors know if you have suggestions for meeting locations, meeting enhancements or other fun and interesting ideas! We really would like your in-put! Don’t forget to check our website www.skal-ftlauderdale-palmbeaches.org to get more information on our club, pictures and the upcoming Skål Monthly Reception and Dinner Meetings.

See you on February 17th at the Delray Sands Resort and don’t forget to bring a guest – potential new member!!

Yours in Skål,

Dick Stafford
Vice President
Skål International Ft. Lauderdale & Palm Beachess