Actually last year the biggest expense for most individuals turned out to be travel.

ND, that's probably going to be the case no matter what. But if you have buffista JackStraw, who is low on cash flow but has frequent flyer miles, the hotel is going to be a factor. Not to mention the add-ons: in Vegas, the cheaper hotels are off the strip, but if you're downtown and want to go play on the strip itself, you either need to allot masses of time to deal with the Vegas public transport system, or else you need wheels. So that's something to consider: is a car going to be needed? How close to action central is the hotel?

That's a hypothetical example, but I can think of more; that one occurred to me because I'm very low in cash flow, but do have FF miles. And the Holiday Inn, for instance, is offering rooms that sleep four as part of our proposal, at $119 a night. That's less than $30 a night for people who who low in dough and willing to quad up.

I did book-related trips this spring, and wouldn't have been able to do Cleveland, for instance, without knowing ahead what the hotel was going to cost. The airfare wasn't the biggie, because I used miles.

All right, then.

The hotel cost is one of the biggest expenses, and may in some circumstances possibly comprise the biggest expense for some people depending on roommate or lack thereof as well as how many nights the person is staying and what airfare they can find, if indeed they fly and don't drive, and therefore it's an important factor for the people for whom cost is an issue as to whether or not they can attend to know in making a vote for the city.

Yep. What Tep said, absolutely.

I think I'm just trying to understand the value of general, broad spectrum information (more vague and subject to change) as opposed to knowing ahead specific information.

I'm not arguing at all that hotel cost is a big factor. Just pointing out that the airfare is what really kicked a lot of folks asses last year.

Not DebetEsse, but I think the idea was that the point people go ahead and gather proposals and any other information they can get, but rather than filling this thread with proposals from each hotel in all three cities, to somehow provide information that covers the whole city. Like, hotels in range 109-129 rather than listing each hotel and its rates. Maybe.

That probably didn't clarify anything. Never mind.

Like, hotels in range 109-129 rather than listing each hotel and its rates.

Um - okay, my brain is apparently draining. Because didn't we have a discussion in which we - the point people - were asked to look in that specific price range anyway, as the top end? And if that's the rate range we're looking at, all the hotels for all the cities are going to be in that range anyway.

So I'm still clueless as to the virtue or benefit of vague information versus specific.

Just pointing out that the airfare is what really kicked a lot of folks asses last year.

Yep. Air fare. Among other things. For me, anyway.

Otherwise I would have gone and slept on someone's floor and eaten table scraps just to hang with my beloved peeps.

The thing about air fare - or train or bus or car or any other form of travel - is that that information is surely outside the purview of the point person. If we have people coming from say three countries and nineteen cities, finding those particular rates by necessity have to be in the lap of the person doing the travelling. For one thing, if you aren't using FF miles, those rates can change dramatically from day to day.

Those numbers were just made up by me. I knew that wouldn't clarify.

The thing with specific information is that it can easily become overwhelming. I know that if we have full porposals from 4 different hotels in 3 cities, I'm going to get confused. What I am in favor of is the point people (who will have much specific information) presenting only the essential information to the rest of us, not everything they know.

And maybe that is totally wrongheaded and not what we should do at all. I don't know.