I'd like to shed some light on how USENIX hotel rates are set. Many have brought up these points, in which case, this will just confirm them. But read on -- I'm also asking for your input towards the end.
First, let me be perfectly clear, USENIX gets absolutely no kickback from the hotel for rooms. Your room payments go to the hotel and that's the end of it. The only accounting that happens between the hotel and USENIX is to determine how many of the rooms we reserved got used. This is checked by USENIX letting the hotel know who our attendees were and the hotel then counting how many rooms were used by those attendees. (And as many mentioned, there are frequently quite large penalties for failing to meet your room block.) The second thing to understand about room rates is that the group rate is set when we book the hotel. For LISA conferences, this must be done approximately five years in advance. While this might seem preposterous, it is reality -- LISA requires several large rooms as well as a large number of rooms (for example, at LISA 2011, on several of the days of LISA we reserved a 3 ballrooms and 10-15 smaller rooms). Add to this large number of rooms, the fact that we could only guarantee about 550 room reservations for those peak nights, and you find yourself in the position of asking a lot from the hotel (all your meeting space) and not being able to give them much in return (only 550 rooms). This does not put us in a very strong position to demand lower room rates as well. Finding hotels that can provide that much meeting space requires about a 5-year planning window. This has significant effects on prices. The rates you paid for LISA 2011 were negotiated in 2006. The economy w as in a very different place in 2006 and the kind of bargain rates you might get today were unavailable then. This does not always work in the hotel's favor. We are currently booking hotels for 2016. Ideally, those rates will be based on today's somewhat lower rates (along with the hotel's expectations of increases); even if the economy looks significantly better in 2016, the hotel will honor the rates we negotiate today, so the whole exercise is a bit of a gamble on both sides. We (USENIX) negotiate quite aggressively with hotels -- they do want our business so we negotiate. For example, at LISA, we were able to obtain free wifi in all the guest rooms; this is not a given; this is something we negotiate. We typically are able to negotiate slightly lower rates than they originally offer us by guaranteeing the hotel a certain number of room reservations and/or a certain amount of catering business (and don't get me started on what hotels charge for food!). The third issue I'd like to bring up is a discussion: what aspects of the hotel are important to LISA attendees? Should we be booking hotels in the center of large metropolitan centers? Or, should we go for less expensive venues (you may recall places like Dallas, Atlanta, etc)? Is it important to have a variety of restaurants within walking distance or would you be happier with a cheaper hotel, with no other food close by? Historically, we have believed that LISA attendees want to be close to the action and some place where they can easily find good restaurants, but these things tend to be associated with more expensive hotels. Smaller hotels do not have the kind of meeting space we need, so there is often little choice but to go with one of the larger chains, who charge a premium. Rest assured that we are just as cost conscious as you are -- it costs USENIX more to hold events in places such as downtown Boston, but we are trying to do what our attendees want. Unfortunately, simply saying we want cheap hotels with excellent accommodations in prime locations isn't an option, as much as we wish it were. - Margo Seltzer Acting Executive Director, USENIX _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
