Re: [Mtgvenue] I-D Action: draft-ietf-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process-14.txt

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On May 9, 2018, at 4:11 PM, Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]> wrote:
> I think we're not asking the secretariat to ascertain whether the
> hotel enforces the smoking policy, and similarly we're not asking the
> secretariat to do mould presence testing.  I don't think we're in a
> position to ask that sort of measurement analysis from the site venue
> selection.  If we actually _want_ that from the selection process, I
> think that we need to make that clear (and then figure out how to pay
> for it, because it won't be free).

I think moulds are fine, but we want to avoid mold.   That said, I agree that this is a valid distinction, but in fact when it's likely to be an issue, as it was in Hiroshima, asking "are the rooms nonsmoking" didn't work either.   In both cases, the site evaluation process requires that someone actually go look at a bunch of rooms in the venue hotel and check to see that there isn't a problem, without first telling the hotel staff specifically what we are looking for, so that they don't know which rooms to steer us toward.

I don't think that we can guarantee perfect results; indeed, it may be that in all cases where this would be a problem, it would also be true that the hotel operator would deliberately mislead the site evaluation team.   But it's a reasonable thing to ask for, and if the site eval team doesn't actually check to see that the hotel operator is telling the truth, there's a real risk of a repeat of Hiroshima.   I don't think that the hotel operator in Singapore would have anticipated the mold issue either—it's just how things are in tropical climates.  This is again something it's reasonable to check during site evaluation.   There is no guarantee that the check will be successful, but it's worth attempting.