Re: Hotel situation

[Jari Arkko <[e-mail]>]

Hi all,

I wanted to first apologise for the difficult situation with hotels (again) - I know
this is important, the IAOC knows this is important, and we are trying. But
I realise that we’re not doing as well as we should. For various reasons.
I refer to what Ray said and what Lou said and what several people
such as Glenn have said about hotel business in general. And thank
you Ray for providing numbers; we’d be happy to provide any other
numbers that people want to see. I also feel bad that I myself am
contributing to the problem as the meeting organisers do set up
a part of the room block marked for, for instance for the IESG
members or the secretariat.

From the IAOC and meeting organising staff point of view, one of the
parameters that we try to figure out is what block size works for us
in the main hotel. There are very good reasons to make that block
big; but there are also some reasons to not make it too big, risk
for us and the hotel, reduction in the number of hotels that we
can even consider, cost increases, etc. The IAOC wants to run
the IETF finances tight so we have been looking at the room
blocks, the number of small meeting rooms and other
factors that we ask for in our hotel contracts. Yokohama
and Buenos Aires have made at least me rethink this,
and maybe our balance isn’t where it should be. Unfortunately,
the hotel deals are made well ahead in time, so it is difficult to
course correct immediately.

I also liked Lou’s prioritised requirements effort.

A couple of other notes, mostly from a personal perspective.
I’ve been to Buenos Aires for a couple of meetings by now,
and I never stayed in the main meeting hotel, either because
I wanted my employer to have to pay less (100$ gets you
many hotels and I wasn’t going to have a vacation in my
room anyway, so a place to sleep was fine) or
once because the meeting host who had invited me had
me placed in one of the surplus hotels due to lack
of availability in their main hotel (which was the Sheraton).

But moving around in the city was easy. I walked everywhere.
I also used taxis, which are cheap and plentiful.

The waterfront area between the Hilton and the main city
center has plenty of good restaurants.

I’ve been to the Hilton, for a meeting, but not stayed at
it. Looked very classy and modern. Compared to the
Sheraton It is newer but also smaller and a bit longer
walk away from the area that the hotels are more plentiful.

Jari