I would say sponsoring Wineconf 2005 would be a better idea (so we could go somewhere exotic (not that St Paul in winter was not exotic in a kinda perverted way for most of us :-) )).
I have volunteered to organize it in Cyprus. I've already started lobbying for that location. After last year's last minute "hey, it's more comfortable in the US" change, I decided that long term preparation for votes, like you do in any self-disrespecting parliament, is the only way to go.
I just a did a quick search and found that airfare to Cyprus is about twice that of anywhere in western Europe. That's about what I would expect too. The cheapest flights from North America are generally into London, Paris, Amsterdam, or Frankfurt. Sometimes Madrid and Rome are reasonable too. Cyprus also adds a fair amount of travel time. Don't get me wrong - Cyprus would be a cool destination and I would love to travel there. It's also wonderful someone is will to try to organize a location other than North America. However, I'm willing to bet a Cyprus location will be such an inconvenient place to get to that we'd keep a lot of people away.