On Nov 12, 2012, at 6:21 PM, joel jaeggli wrote:
On 11/11/12 3:59 AM, Abdussalam Baryun wrote:
I don't think that thoes Canada and US participants are paying for
the attendance, but their organisations, therefore, are we reducing
the cost of other organisations, or we are interested to bring more
participants.
Many participants, myself included are footing our own bill for attendance.
And I'm guessing that this is much more common in the US than in Asia, and
somewhat more common than in Europe.
OTOH US companies tend to have bigger travel budgets.
OTTH US companies tend to consider travel abroad as weird thing much more than
European or Asian companies.
My personal experience (which I think can be proven with some airfare site) is
that travel to the US is considerably cheaper and easier than similar-length
travel to other places.
Airfare tends to be cheaper, because there are a lot more flights to the US
than to pretty much anywhere else, with many more airlines competing. So a
flight to Prague would be cheaper for me, but a flight to China, India or Japan
would be much more expensive.
The US has some expensive hotels, but it's also much easier to find cheaper
hotels. We can (and have) meet a block away from Disneyland, and I can find a
cheap motel less than 2 km away. This is considerably harder in Europe, and
pretty much impossible for a non-local in Asia.
Everyone's mileage varies, of course, and US immigration tends to be more
bothersome than most, but I think a meeting in the US or Canada leaves the
least amount of people not able to attend. Paris and Prague are a close second.
I have no idea how easy it would be to find a reasonably-priced hotel in
London, for example.
Yoav