I'm on my phone so not easy to look up but that might have been the hotel that said no alcohol and off site prom. The Marriott was slightly cheaper before the wireless Internet and parking were negotiated into the room prices.

And realistically, very few major cities have rooms that cheap. $95/night is a steal for a Marriott in a nice city, IMO. Besides, it would suck for the locals not to be able to attend.

Like I said, I agree that $95 is great. I just thought we had a cheaper option and I wish we would make a point of keeping prices as cheap as possible because I'm 99% sure we would get better attendance if we made that a priority.

Maybe next year.

I think the price of flights to F2F locations is probably more of a problem for people money wise than the cost of the hotel usually is.

I was just going to say that, SJ. $20 difference for hotel rooms is much less a variable than the cost of flights.

As for attendance, interest it seems to be waning every year. Perhaps the novelty has simply worm off for a number of people? There might well simply be a group of hardcore enthusiasts who would be served very well by planning for them by them and not worrying too much about those who choose not to attend.

As for attendance, interest it seems to be waning every year. Perhaps the novelty has simply worm off for a number of people? There might well simply be a group of hardcore enthusiasts who would be served very well by planning for them by them and not worrying too much about those who choose not to attend.

I was thinking about this the other day, and I wonder if part of it isn't that many people are in different situations than when the F2Fs first started. It seems to me that there are far more people on the board now with families, mortages, and other obligations that didn't have those things when I first joined the buffistas. Those things do often make it more difficult to travel. Not to mention that the economy isn't as good as it used to be.

Good points, sj.

Also, I wasn't implying that cost isn't a factor. It just seems that the interest isn't there in general the way it used to be, as evidenced in the historical F2F discussions.

I'm curious what people consider a cheap option. To me a hotel room for $99 is a very cheap option. For most of the cities that I travel to I expect a decent hotel room to be $159-$209 a night. Perhaps we could lower hotel costs by going to small off market cities, staying in the suburbs, and then optioning for a Motel 6, but I'm not certain that is where everyone would like to end up. When I stay in smaller markets for travel I usually opt for a Holiday Inn Express, which is typically a decent room and is present even in small towns, but even there I usually expect to pay $99/night.

ND, I'm with you in considering $99 a night to be a very cheap option. As I said, airfare is more of a concern for me.

I agree. I think airfare is often the biggest money factor, but so are other factors like children and home expenses. I think waning attendance also links to the fact that we often haven't nailed down plans until a few months (or less) before the event. I agree with Java, though--I think we should just make plans and hope people can come, and scale back if the numbers are low or cancel if a year goes by without much interest. I also plan to re-propose the October F2F pimping and planning month this year, fwiw.