Hotel new math follies
Aug. 1st, 2011 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_archfiendYou'll have to pardon me for bitching about a subject that never fails to irritate me, but consider the following numbers very carefully when you compare the following Chicago-area fannish conventions:
Capricon 31 (from memory): $107/night, single through quad; $119/night for a party suite
Duckon: the rate for Duckon 20 was taken off the web site, but IIRC it was either was $99 or $109/night for a standard single or double.
Windycon 38 (upcoming): $103/night for a regular room, $153/night for a party suite.
Chicon 7 in 2012: the rates aren't posted, but I seem to remember them being locked in at $145/night for a standard room.
Anime Central (2012): $175/night single through quad and suites "half off of the Hyatt's rack rate per night."
Does that last one seem just a bit...pricy to anyone? Especially in relation to the other con's room rates that I just quoted?
A bit of a gedankenexperiment, here: If you go directly to the Hyatt corporate web site and try to make a reservation for the weekend previous to Acen 2012 (unsurprisingly, online reservations aren't available the weekend of the con), you get rates ranging anywhere from $189/night to $229/night depending on what level of extra doodads you want with the package. In other words, if you choose to register through the convention room block, your savings for a standard room amounts to a whole $14 worth of savings a day. Big Whoop. Especially when you consider that other anime cons such as Kollision Con got rates from $99 to $119/night and Anime Midwest ended up getting $99 to $109/night. To be fair, both are booked at the Pheasant Run in St. Charles, but Anime World Chicago isn't, and they succeeded in getting a rate of only $89/night for a first-time anime con, for crying out loud!
At one time, I was under the impression that Acen got taken to the cleaners by Hyatt Regency O'Hare staff on their room rates because - unlike mainsteam, fan-run SF conventions - their hotel liasions were either inexperienced in dealing with special events staff at hotels or were just brow-beaten into lousy contracts by high-pressure sales tactics. For example, their basic contract at the now defunct Sheraton Chicago Northwest was $99/night the last year they were there. I don't believe any of that anymore, as the results I posted above fully indicate. And this from a convention that has always insisted that moving to a different location (such as McCormick Place, which is their default position on this question on their web site's forums) would be prohibitively expensive.
Which leads to this question: expensive to who, exactly?
Capricon 31 (from memory): $107/night, single through quad; $119/night for a party suite
Duckon: the rate for Duckon 20 was taken off the web site, but IIRC it was either was $99 or $109/night for a standard single or double.
Windycon 38 (upcoming): $103/night for a regular room, $153/night for a party suite.
Chicon 7 in 2012: the rates aren't posted, but I seem to remember them being locked in at $145/night for a standard room.
Anime Central (2012): $175/night single through quad and suites "half off of the Hyatt's rack rate per night."
Does that last one seem just a bit...pricy to anyone? Especially in relation to the other con's room rates that I just quoted?
A bit of a gedankenexperiment, here: If you go directly to the Hyatt corporate web site and try to make a reservation for the weekend previous to Acen 2012 (unsurprisingly, online reservations aren't available the weekend of the con), you get rates ranging anywhere from $189/night to $229/night depending on what level of extra doodads you want with the package. In other words, if you choose to register through the convention room block, your savings for a standard room amounts to a whole $14 worth of savings a day. Big Whoop. Especially when you consider that other anime cons such as Kollision Con got rates from $99 to $119/night and Anime Midwest ended up getting $99 to $109/night. To be fair, both are booked at the Pheasant Run in St. Charles, but Anime World Chicago isn't, and they succeeded in getting a rate of only $89/night for a first-time anime con, for crying out loud!
At one time, I was under the impression that Acen got taken to the cleaners by Hyatt Regency O'Hare staff on their room rates because - unlike mainsteam, fan-run SF conventions - their hotel liasions were either inexperienced in dealing with special events staff at hotels or were just brow-beaten into lousy contracts by high-pressure sales tactics. For example, their basic contract at the now defunct Sheraton Chicago Northwest was $99/night the last year they were there. I don't believe any of that anymore, as the results I posted above fully indicate. And this from a convention that has always insisted that moving to a different location (such as McCormick Place, which is their default position on this question on their web site's forums) would be prohibitively expensive.
Which leads to this question: expensive to who, exactly?
