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[Cyrus]

Hi everyone,

As the hotel room bookings are more and more like the ones for major US cons, I would like to add an idea.
Every fully payed attendee should have an individual token which gets automatically generated upon paying the ticket.
This token can then be provided while booking a room from the EF contingent. The estrel can then visit a special site of the EF registration and check whether the attendee has payed his ticket and if the names match with the hotel room booking by providing this token.
This way the Estrel staff can refuse any bookings for non-payed tickets.

I know this might be more work in the beginning and almost certainly for the Estrel but I suppose this would be the best way to provide a fair booking of the rooms.

Cheers
Cyrus

[Dhary Montecore]

As far as I know people are free to book a room WITHOUT paying for the con first as attendees should be free to choose not to attend if they don't have a room. Hence why they can see if they get a room before they need to pay.

[Zefiro]

In addition to that, the hotel has it's own workflow and the more 'special requirements' (and additional work) we have, the less likely they'd be willing to do it - or able to, as I suspect it's the same as with all companies: hard to keep everyone fully informed, in line or decisions centralized, or even change existing workflows (like the outsourced credit-card based booking). So I'd always assume some level of "didn't go exactly as planned in every single case", which also speaks against too complicated solutions.

*purrrr*

[SouthPaw]

Another idea would be to go down the route taken by Anthrocon and Further Confusion, whereby the Hotel charges the first night's stay to your card as a non-refundable deposit when you make the booking (or shortly thereafter). This was brought in because they had the situation that the Hotels would sell out really quickly after registration opened, only to suddenly end up with a load of cancellations just before the convention once people had sorted out room shares or realised they couldn't attend.

[Cyrus]

As far as I know people are free to book a room WITHOUT paying for the con first as attendees should be free to choose not to attend if they don't have a room. Hence why they can see if they get a room before they need to pay.

That's true, I suppose there is no perfect way to solve this. I wouldn't want to pay the con fee either if I didn't know if its gonna work out.

I like the idea that SouthPaw has, this way you can make the payment and even decide to pay the convention ticket in the next month if money is scarce or don't pay at all if no room is available

[Strangewolf]

Another idea would be to go down the route taken by Anthrocon and Further Confusion, whereby the Hotel charges the first night's stay to your card as a non-refundable deposit when you make the booking (or shortly thereafter). This was brought in because they had the situation that the Hotels would sell out really quickly after registration opened, only to suddenly end up with a load of cancellations just before the convention once people had sorted out room shares or realised they couldn't attend.

Since the thead is about improvement: What does that improve?
I have several things in my mind, you could try to address, but for you, the attendees, nothing would be 'better' than now.
AFAIK we don't have a problem with canceled rooms, we have a problem with room capacity in general - every canceled room finds a new attendee very fast, until start of EF and probably it would even during.

Regards
 - Strangewolf

[Zefiro]

AFAIK we don't have a problem with canceled rooms, we have a problem with room capacity in general - every canceled room finds a new attendee very fast, until start of EF and probably it would even during.

Looking at the TOTAL numbers, you're right: we do have way less total room capacity than demand. This is nothing we can fix ourselves.

However, on an individual level, there is a second issue: many need to plan their vacations early in the year, and not having a hotel room secured is a major issue. So while we might get every room filled even shortly before the convention, I'd guess it's a different crowd: those who are really enthusiastic about EF, those who really want to go and need the planning security, will need to have made other arrangements already. Thus the rooms will probably be more filled with those spontanously deciding whether they're going to EF or not.

*purrrr*

[Strangewolf]

But none of that ideas (or ways AC does) will really make a change on that.
If I have to pay for the forst night in front, I just do... I can get my money back if I sell the room via forum/whatever anyways, I would not have to be worried about loosing that money.
If you would want to address that, hotel would have to take a rebook-fee (and even if they charge you 10 € it won't change a lot, IMHO).

Regards
 - Strange

[Token]

But none of that ideas (or ways AC does) will really make a change on that.
If I have to pay for the forst night in front, I just do... I can get my money back if I sell the room via forum/whatever anyways, I would not have to be worried about loosing that money.

It might still keep some 'I'll book a room without knowing what the fuck I am doing'-type of people from doing it? Okay, I guess the number of these might be rather low.

But having *some* sort of motivation in place for people to 'only book a hotel room if you mean it' would be nice. Maybe a system that makes it easier for room partners to match up before registration… you enter the planned times and some basic preferences and get a list of other people matching this you could share a room with. Then you would send an inquiry for contact information and sort it out with the person.

Having more people who know how they will fill the rooms might decrease the 'I will book and figure out later' bookers?

Hmm
Token

[Carenath]

It really is just a case of rising demand outmatching the capacity at the hotel, the moral is "book early, book fast".

With the move to the Estrel I was rather surprised at how quickly it has grown. When do they complete the addition of more rooms?

[Fineas]

It really is just a case of rising demand outmatching the capacity at the hotel, the moral is "book early, book fast".

With the move to the Estrel I was rather surprised at how quickly it has grown. When do they complete the addition of more rooms?

Of what I can find in 2017
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estrel_Hotel

But news is pretty slim. Some Google-foo does not bring up anything news.
I guess it does not make a lot of sense to report on a building progress unless there are some major hurdles or issues.

[Strangewolf]

Trash that. Since they didn't even start... never ever.
AFAIK they will start next year (they can't start before the hightway progess is far enough at the area close to it) and will need about 2 years, which means that we could use the new tower in 2019 / for EF25.
Changes are close to 0, that it will be ready for EF 24.

[Twillight]

Jedenfalls wird nächstes Jahr ein noch schlimmerer Kampf um die Zimmer im Estrel sein, als dieses Jahr.  Ein schlimmeres Hauen und Stechen. Und die Reichen werden wieder unfaire Vorteile haben!!  Weil sie sich eher die Zimmer sichern können als andere.

In any case, next year be a worse fight for the rooms at the Estrel, than this year. A worse cut and thrust. And the rich will again have an unfair advantage !! Because they are more able to secure the room than others.

[Suicune]

Why should have rich people have advantage? EF books nearly the whole hotel and no one can book a room before the reg date. oO
There are just some rooms left from the hotel-room and whatever companies Estrel has a contract with.

[Morkai]

And the rich will again have an unfair advantage !! Because they are more able to secure the room than others.

What are you talking about? The registration process is the same for everybody and starts at almost the same time every year.
So it should not be a problem to plan ahead and save some money till registration opens.

BTT:
We may could delay the booking for the hotelrooms by one or two weeks so people can think about who they want to room with first.