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Re: Hawaii Block - going, going, gone for Saturday

2014-09-03 15:40:58
On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 4:31 PM, Brian E Carpenter
<brian(_dot_)e(_dot_)carpenter(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
Ray,

I can understand why you didn't have contractual arrangements
with other hotels, but the web site doesn't even identify a few
nearby hotels - it doesn't even mention the fact that we will
be in Waikiki, which consists mainly of hotels. Naturally people

It has an address for the hotel, right?
  <http://www.ietf.org/meeting/91/hotel.html>
  "Hilton Hawaiian Village
2005 Kaila Road
Honolulu, HI, 96815 USA"

in your browser of choice (for one example):
  www.google.com/hotels

put in the name of the hotel:
  Hilton Hawaiian Village

Fill in the start/end dates.... click the "go" button (whatever the
button is called)

Look, lots of options... with a map you can click and poke around on even.

Oh look:
  www.bing.com/hotels

fill in hotel name and date range ... (no clicking of 'go' required here)
lookie! a map with options and pricing and ...

is it reasonable to hand-hold professional travelers in their path to
'get a hotel near where the conference is' ?

-chris

have all tried to get into the main hotel, which breaks your normal
statistical assumption of 600 beds.

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

On 04/09/2014 01:03, Ray Pelletier wrote:
On Sep 3, 2014, at 8:32 AM, Stewart Bryant <stbryant(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com> 
wrote:

Ray

This looks like we only got 600 rooms in the block at a meeting
that we would expect to get over 1000 people at and where pretty
much everyone needs to travel to.

Is that the normal ratio we assume for planning and why were
there no backups listed this time?

For the Hilton Hawaiian Village we contracted for (“booked”) 600 rooms on a 
peak night,
3,459 room nights all together.

We book nights over a 12 day period which provides room availability for 
staff and
contractors to arrive the Wednesday before, through the Sunday after the 
meeting.

Our contracts provide that the Hotels will make our rates available up to 3 
days before and
after the meeting, if there is space available.

The HiltonHV has about 3,000 rooms, but other groups have room blocks and 
the Hilton
needs to check with the other groups to see if they are prepared to give up 
some rooms
in response to our request for more rooms.

We did look into overflow hotels (backups) but we chose not to enter into a 
contract
because the hotels wanted Attrition clauses whereby we (ISOC) would be 
liable for making
up the difference in sales if we didn’t meet at least 80% of the room block. 
 Their reason
for the Attrition clause: they are concerned that there are so many hotels 
in the area where
our attendees could elect to book that without the Attrition, they will not 
agree to contract.
And they are right. There are many hotels in the area at various price 
points that signing a
contract with an attrition clause would be to assume unacceptable risk.  We 
(ISOC) have never
paid for not meeting our contracted block for an IETF meeting.

As a matter of practice I like to book 600 on a peak night, about 50% of the 
expected attendance.
Often we can get that at the HQ hotel, but not always.  Sometimes it’s only 
400.  Yokohama is
about 300, Buenos Aires is much less also.

I will then do Overflow Hotels to get us up to the 600, and beyond if there 
is no Attrition clause
in the contracts AND if we can get a better deal for the community than they 
can get for themselves.
But this is an art not a science.  In Anaheim we were surrounded by lots of 
hotels at different price
points providing all kinds of competition for the HQ hotel.  We typically 
don’t do overflows in that
scenario and our HQ room block will likely be lower than 600.  In Paris we 
did a HQ hotel and the
hotel across the street.  We were negotiating with others but they wanted 
$300 a night.  We didn’t
contract with them.

I hope this provides some context.

Ray



- Stewart


On 03/09/2014 13:15, Ray Pelletier wrote:
All,

I want to update you on the numbers for what has been reserved by 
attendees as of
Tuesday 2 September compared to what was blocked.

            Block   Reservations
Mon         0               1
Tues                0               8
Wed         10              19
Thur                15              32
Fri         60              127
Sat         270             375
Sun         552             558
Mon         600             563
Tues                600             560
Wed         582             557
Thur                528             551
Fri         183             386
Sat         54              95
Sun         5               2
            3,459   3,844

Of course we have asked for more to accommodate the demand, but
I am not optimistic.  I will report back when we have heard about
our request.

Ray

On Sep 3, 2014, at 7:19 AM, Eggert, Lars <lars(_at_)netapp(_dot_)com> 
wrote:

On 2014-8-27, at 16:56, Jari Arkko 
<jari(_dot_)arkko(_at_)piuha(_dot_)net> wrote:
For your information, Ray and the secretariat are looking into the room 
block situation. Stay tuned.
Is there any new information? Co-workers are not succeeding in booking 
rooms.

Lars

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