Re: Hotel situation

[Toerless Eckert <[e-mail]>]

+1 on the analysis. Which is yet another reason why i avoid
booking conf hotel at higher rates. It would just support their rigged scheme.

On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 05:54:27PM +0000, Deen, Glenn (NBCUniversal) wrote:
> I don¹t think the fault lies in either out volunteers or AMS, I suspect we
> are quite simply not being treated well by hotels.
> 
> I just now booked the Hilton, however not via the IETF link, because the
> IETF link had no rooms available for the days of the week I needed one.
> 
> When I used the IETF rate link, it said there was NO availability for the
> week at the IETF rate.    I then logged onto to Hilton.com directly,
> checked the hotel and was offered the $270 rate (plus 21% tax -wow!), but
> it gave me the Internet Society rate - which was weird.   So to get a
> room, I booked through directly through hilton.com at the higher rate.
> 
> I had to do the same in Yokohama.  I tried to book the Yokohama hotel via
> the IETF within about 30 minutes of the announcement of booking being
> open.   ZERO rooms where available, but when I booked directly (at a much
> higher rate), I was able to get a room.
> 
> 
> >From a user¹s perspective this is great for the hotel.  They can offer a
> limited ³IETF² rate, that is very limited and hard to get, but they can up
> sell attendees who are willing to spend more to get into the hotel at much
> higher rate.  This creates a false impression that the IETF isn¹t filling
> the hotel because many people are booked in directly and not in the IETF
> block.  So the hotels can justify small blocks in the future.
> 
> The hotel¹s are the ones that win here.  They get the IETF meeting rooms
> and food costs.  They sell a limited set of IETF rate teaser rooms. Then
> they fill up the hotel with high rate rooms which are still taken by IETF
> attendees.    That seems like a very bad faith behavior on the part of the
> hotel.
> 
> I¹d like to understand what¹s going on with the room blocks the hotels are
> giving us.  I know that hotels used to give us very good sized blocks and
> they would take a while to fill up.  Now they are filling up immediately -
> or are they?  
>   
>     Q- What¹s the room block size we are getting at the recent venues
> compared to what we got at previous ones like Vancouver, or Berlin?
>     
>     Q - Are hotels artificially limiting availability of the IETF block by
> only releasing parts of it to the web booking?
>         I¹ve seen hotels do this for other events.  While the whole block
> maybe 500 rooms, they release them in 50 room blocks as the
>         reservation block fills.  This creates the lucky 10th caller
> scenario, where if you hit it at just the right time you win.
> 
> -glenn
>