I don't think our point people have the time or energy to get proposals from more than 2 or 3 hotels.

And I find the idea of reading 6-9 proposals before voting on what city I'd like to go to next May daunting.

That's clearly just me, and I will say no more about it.

And I find the idea of reading 6-9 proposals before voting on what city I'd like to go to next May daunting.

I don't blame you in the least. It is daunting.

But - why do you have to? If each proposal has a single line at the end with a rough per-guest cost average, that should take a lot of the ouch out of nine proposals.

I'm Doblerizing, I know. Apologies for that.

I just wanted to let everyone know that Debet is starting grad classes tomorrow, and she probably didn't even get home to Baltimore until extremely late last night. I doubt she's even had time to catch up in thread yet, so I suspect that a delayed response is a bit unavoidable right now. I'm sure she'll join the conversation soon. I just started becoming concerned that she's going to feel inundated when she does catch up.

My guess is that she'll clarify as soon as she's on her feet in school.

DEBET! (whistling with two fingers in mouth)

Aint no kerfuffle, cutie. This is purely discussion - any attempt to kerfuffle will be sat upon and stifled, a la Desdemona.

Because to be truthful, Kristin, I'm on the edge of a timing volcano myself: I'm 3/4 done with new book, and St. Martins wants one with 55K words left to write by 15 November, and somewhere in the middle of that, I need to go out on the road and promote one that's coming out in mid-October.

So I'm all in favour of Doblerising. My main aim right now is to get what's needed and/or wanted, and get it down, and pass it along.

My question on the when of the voteness remains, though. I'd like to have some ammo in my pocket when talking to hotels.

Thanks, Kristin (I'm actually currently sitting in class on a break right now).

I had 3 goals with the "keep it vaguer" thing

1) Keeping people from having to look over details for a half-dozen hotels for each location, which is less of a thing if it's only 2-3 for each.

2) Keeping people from voting for a city because a specific hotel is there, when we may end up at a different hotel (which is what I meant by "not pan out")

3) Keeping details from multiple hotels from running together (which, I think, happened a bit in NOLA) in our heads, so that "we can get these things in this city", when it's actually more like, "well, yes, but not all in one place".

The bullet-point city-pimp is what I was thinking, but if people want full details on hotels, that's cool with me. I just want to make sure there's an easily-digestable version that's hard to miss, when it comes time to vote.

For the city-pimping, key info, to me, is the hotel stuff, what you consider the highlights of possible activities (preferably with some sort of "how much would that cost"), and what transport options look like. Anybody got anything else that should be included?

As far as the when, I'll defer to Susan, Deb, and Aimee on when they think they can make that work. Thoughts, ladies?

1) Keeping people from having to look over details for a half-dozen hotels for each location, which is less of a thing if it's only 2-3 for each.

But that's not vague and general information; that's specific info about a small range of hotels. Vague has entirely different meaning; so does general. You don't want vague or general, you want fewer. That, I'm at your shoulder, waving pompoms and cheering. As I said, I'm planning on a range of three, if there are three to be found.

2) Keeping people from voting for a city because a specific hotel is there, when we may end up at a different hotel (which is what I meant by "not pan out")

I don't think you can keep people from voting for a given spot for a given reason, period. I voted specifically against NOLA, despite loving the city itself, for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with the hotel. Most people are going to have their own ideas about where they want to go and why.

3) Keeping details from multiple hotels from running together (which, I think, happened a bit in NOLA) in our heads, so that "we can get these things in this city", when it's actually more like, "well, yes, but not all in one place".

Yes, this. Definitely. That's why I proposed a one-paragraph summary for each hotel under the full proposal: people who are daunted by reading the entire range of info (that includes me, BTW) can scan down and read the blurb with the facts/figures.

In re pimping San Francisco? I'm stumped. My immediate reaction is write something like "top five worldwide tourist destination of choice for fifty years, number one a lot of the time, bridges, hills, wine country, crab!, Nob Hill, rock and roll!, Metreon, shopping, geographic gorgeousness, good public transport, please don't drive here if hills scare you, food!, Ghirardelli Square, Berkeley, yada yada."

Basically, my take on SF is that, if people don't know what's here, they haven't been paying attention. It's like trying to pimp New York: what isn't there?

In re pimping San Francisco? I'm stumped.

I'm sure DavidS will cover the pimpage if needed.

Heh. Jon, honestly - what's to pimp? That's the deal about this year's choices; they're three enormously popular tourist destinations, and with really good reason.

I love Paris with the kind of love most people seem to reserve for hobbits, but if asked by someone, I'm thinking about going to Paris, tell me what's there, I'd just blink at them, and go, um, hellllloooo?

Deb, is it possible that there are two issues going on here? I agree that there isn't really any need to pimp SF, LV, and Seattle as great-things-to-do destinations. It's generally known what those cities have to offer generally. (Though I'd offer "classic movies in theaters!" as one attraction of Paris, so a review of the lesser-known things to do might not be a bad idea)

But one issue for any city is going to be, can we find a hotel that meets our needs affordably? As far as I'm concerned, any city that can't is out of the running. Also, my preferences right now are weak enough that the right hotel might affect my vote.

But one issue for any city is going to be, can we find a hotel that meets our needs affordably? As far as I'm concerned, any city that can't is out of the running. Also, my preferences right now are weak enough that the right hotel might affect my vote.

Yes, exactly. This is very much my feeling: I'm not trying to sell anyone on San Francisco as a Cool Exciting Place to See, because I pretty much figure everyone knows that. SF does a good job of selling itself. This city flaunts its attractions like a Parisian streetwalker in 1935. It costs more, though.

I was seriously wondering if a "this is the downside to the city" blurb might not be more useful than pimpage.