Re: IETF hotel selection mode and a proposal (was" Re: Hilton BA is Booked already?)

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Monday, January 11, 2016 18:01 -0800 Randall Gellens
<[e-mail]> wrote:

>...
> I'd like to point out the obvious, which is that there are two
> parts to the hold-back number.  Expanding the IETF room block
> from 400 to, say, 800 or 900, would be a way to shrink the
> percent and cut way back on the "how can the hotel be sold out
> within an hour of the announcement" complaints.

But that gets back to an example of the same old set of
tradeoffs --and my desire that those involved in the process be
a lot more transparent about it.  Your comment above is
reasonable and even obvious.  But there are cities (apparently
including Buenos Aires) where there are approximately zero
hotels that have enough rooms to give us an 800 or 900 room
block. 

So, would you propose a hard rule of "stop considering any city
unless we could got a room block of at least N rooms", with N
somewhere in the range of 800 or 900?   Unlike the variety of
more subjective rules, it would be very clear and easy to
interpret.    My assumption about IETF 95 is that, despite
understanding and considering the disadvantages of smaller
hotels, the decision-makers believed they had a sufficient "go
to Buenos Aires" mandate to override hotel or room block size
considerations.  I presume that, for the future, we could change
that if we had consensus that, e.g., minimum room block size was
a firm requirement.

     john