President’s Letter
May 19, 2015

Our first meeting of our new year was held at the Doubletree by Hilton, Deerfield Beach. We had a great turn out of members including guests representing Skal in the UK, Boston and Crystal Cruises!

Our club collected donations from our 50/50 raffle in March to support Vanuatu after Tropical Cyclone Pam and this month's donation will go to Nepal. Thank you to all who donated to support the clubs in both of these devastated areas!

You should have received your "Save the Date" notice for the Hospitality Industry Icebreaker which will be held at the South Florida Science Center and Aquarium in West Palm Beach on July 22nd. This is an opportunity for our club members to join hospitality friends and colleagues for a fun evening of networking, music by DJ Hennessy, raffle prizes and more! This will give us an opportunity to meet hundreds of members and leaders from The Palm Beaches' hospitality organizations. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to host a booth to share our Skal International information with other hospitality organizations! What a great way to shine and grow our membership! We could really use your help in making this a huge event for our club! I would love to see as many Skal members as possible join us! Also, let us know if you would like to work at the booth or donate for our drawing.

We are in the running for Skal International Club of the Year! How exciting! Please let us know if you have any ideas to be included in the power point presentation that we will be putting together to show what our club did and accomplished during the year to promote our selection.

Get ready to enjoy another wine pull for our Summer Social! We are looking for wine donations along with auction items. This event was a huge success last year...so you aren’t going to want to miss it. You will receive an evite with the location but mark your calendars for August 19th.

Please get involved in our events this summer! We really do need you to participate!

Your Board of Directors will be focused again this year on increasing membership and maintaining the members we have. If you have any suggestions on a speaker or a place to hold a future meeting, please feel free to share your ideas with us.

Carlos and Dick attended the NAASC Congress in Riviera Maya, Mexico May 13th – 17th and reported the following highlights of the Congress and the SIUSA AGM:

• Possible new SIUSA Skal clubs being formed in Savannah, Naples, Greenville, St Louis, Branson and restart Phoenix.

• SIUSA financial situation back in order thanks to all of Carlos’s hard work over the last 3 years – SIUSA now has $285,000 in reserves.

• SIUSA 2015 NCM will be in Las Vegas Aug 28-30 – may be changed to an AGM. We will be sending a voting representative to the meeting.

• Skal now supporting ASTA and will have a booth at the International conference.

• Skal International World Congress cancelled in Kenya with the location changed to Spain – we should be represented there as possible winner of Skal International Club of the Year.

• SIUSA 2016 AGM venue voted on at the AGM – members selected Little Rock, AK.

• Skal now sponsoring Tourism Cares and will participate in 4 events. The first in November 2015 at the Grand Canyon, the 2nd & 3rd locations to be decided and the last event will be in November 2016 at the Statue of Liberty.

• Possible new membership category being considered by Skal International – Sports Travel.

Don’t forget to RSVP for our June 16th dinner meeting at the beautiful Palm Beach Marriott Singer Island Beach Resort and Spa.

Let's wish our members “Happy Birthday”!

Together in Skål,

Becky Reincke
President
Skål International Ft. Lauderdale & Palm Beaches