Konkani Sammelan 2022 - COVID-19 Coronavirus Update

Hotel Bookings: We are still working with the hotels on the new room booking links. These links will be available in early September 2020. We will send a separate email when these links are available.

Thanks for your patience.
Konkani Sammelan Team

Namaskaru,

We hope you and your family are staying safe and healthy. This has been a difficult time for many, and we extend our warm wishes to everyone. Once again, on behalf of the Konkani Sammelan 2020 committee, we thank each and everyone of you for your patience, understanding, and support for our event.

At the beginning of April, we informed everyone that we would be rescheduling the Sammelan to December 2020. For several reasons listed below, we have since chosen to further postpone the event. The new date of the Konkani Sammelan is July 2nd – 4th , 2021, and it will be held at the same venue (San Jose McEnery Convention Center, San Jose, CA).

1. Earlier this week, California Governor, Gavin Newsom, released a 4-stage roadmap for how the Stay-At-Home order will be gradually removed. California is currently in Stage 1, in which only essential businesses such as grocery stores, banks, and pharmacies, are open. Convention Centers will be allowed to hold large-scale events such as the Sammelan only in Stage 4, and we project that could take at least another 6 - 8 months.
2. The Centers for Disease Control has released new projections that warn of a second wave of COVID-19 spread in the latter half of 2020. These warnings have led the Mayor of San Jose and county health officials to state that they do not anticipate allowing any gatherings of greater than 50 people until after the end of 2020.
3. Many of our registrants have reached out to us expressing concerns that traveling in the wintertime may be difficult, both due to the COVID-19 risk as well as due to other factors such as the weather and the regular flu season.

With the health, safety, and well-being of our Sammelan attendees and of the Konkani community at large being of prime importance to us in the Committee, we have arrived at the decision, after due deliberations, that it would be best to push out the Sammelan to July 2021. We are doing our best to continue this event as planned for the whole community to enjoy.

Here are the modified registration and hotel booking policies in light of the date change:

Registration: Here are the modified registration policies in light of the date change:

• Your registration for the Konkani Sammelan will automatically be carried over without any action on your part.
• The early bird prices are locked in along with those savings for those who registered on or before Jan 31st , 2020.
• Our Special Discount registration pricing will be available until Jan 31st, 2021.
• The "Modify My Registration" form will be available on the Konkani Sammelan website by May 20th, 2020. If you will not be attending the rescheduled Sammelan, you can request cancellation of your Sammelan registration using this form.

Hotel Bookings: 

• We have been able to negotiate the same hotel rates with each of the hotels for 2021.
• However, all the earlier hotel bookings made for July 2020 will need to be cancelled.
  • If you had booked the hotels on your own, please cancel your bookings by either calling the hotel directly or by going online to their respective websites. We request you to cancel the bookings at your earliest convenience, and definitely by the end of May, 2020.
  • For those of you who had the rooms booked via the packages, we will cancel your hotel bookings.
  • For those of you who had your rooms at the Marriott booked through us, we will cancel your Marriott bookings.
• We will send new hotel room booking links by the end of July 2020.

We humbly ask for your patience and understanding while we continue to make the changes required for this event to be successful. We will keep you updated as we continue to work out the logistics.

Once again, we request your support for the Konkani Sammelan 2020 to be held in July 2021. We would love to see you all there!

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call us at 408-459-8423 or email us at askammani@konkanisammelan.org.

Devu Baren Koro,
Aruna and Ram Acharya Presidents,
Konkani Sammelan 2020