Why have reservation procedures changed this year?


Short answer: We're trying to make it better.


Long answer: We're trying to make it better by solving a number
of difficult problems.


Some of these problems have been and are:


1. Confusion as to what constitutes a "Double".  Most people think
of a double as a room with two double beds.  However our hotel
chain defaults a "Double" to "two people in one queen-sized bed".
This causes problems at check-in.  People get very angry when they
discover they don't have two beds, the hotel is sold out of rooms
with two double beds, and the hotel doesn't have any cots left.
Hopefully we've made it clear which-is-what in our mailing and on
the reservation form.


2. Hotel corporate central reservations departments generally can't
manage to deal with Quiet Block vs Party Block let alone other
blocks like Staff, Dealers Row, etc, etc.  All of our attendees
know the difference though, so we'd rather they just fill out the
form instead of dealing with a clerk in Central Reservations who
hasn't the faintest idea what each block is.


3. Smoking is a separate area (the entire 6th floor) of the hotel.
If we were to include this floor in one of our main blocks we'd
have to take the entire floor.  (Having dealt with this before, the
hotel liason staff would really-really prefer NOT to have to deal
with large numbers of non-smoking fen FORCED to sleep in smoking.)

Instead we've made Smoking a small block separate from the other
blocks. Ergo, you can't have a Party or Quiet room and still have
a smoking room. Central Reservations can't deal with this either.


4. The hotel has a plethora of different room types. (Main Single,
Main Parlor, Main Queen, Main King, Main Double, Family Double,
Executive King, Junior Suite King, Suite King).  (This is actually
a nice feature, the hotel has more character then most others.)
However the computer at central reservations only knows about
room types "Queen", "King", "Two Double Beds", and "Suites". It's
difficult to try and guarantee a specific type of room in advance.


5. The Hotel layed off their in-house reservations department this
year and is relying entirely on Central Reservations. So we can't
even tell people to call the hotel directly to try and get the
info correct. (Actually you can call the hotel directly, but you
will get Central Reservations folks anyway who have been told to
say they are "Park Plaza Reservations".)


6. The hotel has about 150 fewer rooms with two double beds then
our attendees want.  This is because the normal business traveling
public prefers rooms with King and Queen beds, not rooms with two
Double beds.  Fannish conventions always want more doubles then
are available.  Folks that wanted doubles that didn't get them at
best can use rollaway beds.  However the hotel doesn't have the
manpower to move 150 rollaway beds into hotel rooms all in one day
(upon check-in).  The only way to deal with this is to create a
list in advance of everyone who wants a pay for a cot and which
(preassigned) room they will be in.


7. The default hotel room assignment method is "first arrived, first
served".  In past years that means that people who arrive on Thursday
or before 1PM on Friday get what they want.  The tired and grumpy
individual that arrives at 11PM Friday night with a "party of five"
discovers that the only rooms left over are tiny Airline Singles (even
though they made a confirmed reservation back in July.)  Since Arisia
is doing room assignments, we can implement a "first-reserved-first-
served" system which we believe is fairer.


8. The hotel can't do it any other way because their computer system
is designed to satisfy the needs of common business conventions. This
is not because the hotel is trying to be difficult or doesn't care.
It's more because we have different needs then most other conventions.
So if we want anything different we really have to do it ourselves.


9. We really-really want to do whatever we can to make the convention
weekend experience better for all our members.  Part of this requires
dealing with hotel reservations.  We hope that this change this year
will eliminate or reduce the problems from prior years.


If you have requests or questions about this, please feel free to send
EMail to "hotel@arisia.org".

You may also send comments and feedback to "conchair@arisia.org" and/or
"president@arisia.org".

Thanks.