Re: [Mtgvenue] Comments on draft-baker-mtgvenue-iaoc-venue-selection-process-02

[Yoav Nir <[e-mail]>]

Hi, Laura

> On 2 Nov 2016, at 0:03, Laura Nugent <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> There is no question that requiring a headquarters hotel that is willing and able to offer guest rooms to accommodate 1/3 of our anticipated attendance results in the elimination of a number of cities as well as otherwise suitable venues within cities.  
> 
> I understood that the benefit of requiring this number of guest rooms at the headquarters hotel was primarily related to the desire to provide a large number of attendees with the IETF network, which is only available in the headquarters hotel.

That was a big consideration ten years ago. At the time a significant fraction of hotels didn’t have wireless LAN at all. Many others either charged high prices for Internet access, or provided service that was not significantly better than dial-up (like a 5Mbps ADSL connection serving the entire hotel), or both.

Today you can usually get pretty acceptable Internet service at any random hotel and it’s usually included in the room price. The only annoyance is the captive portal. Sure, there are exceptions, but it has become enough of a non-issue that I think we can omit this from the considerations.

Yoav