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.

Oh holy cow, $95 is great, I've said it 95 times -- but if it were a priority and we built in a enough time and people we could get it cheaper and have better attendance.

And, people clearly aren't as into it. And we could deffinately consider changing the procedures.

But for nine years running we had a big "I just can't afford to come and I thought I could" at the last minute contingent which seems to have remained pretty much proportional (with a New Orleans bubble). I doubt that will change with number ten.

The smaller the group, however, the bigger hit each individual takes. I'll go. I always go. And I'll take the hit.

And then next year I'll post this post for the ninth time. It's tradish.

(Or maybe I'll just start C&Ping them ;)

I also plan to re-propose the October F2F pimping and planning month this year, fwiw.

I still think this is a good idea too. The holidays seem to eat up a lot of people's energy and by the time we've recovered it is getting close to F2F time.

However, I would prefer not to cancel a year altogether unless there is no interest at all. I still enjoyed seeing people last year, and even though it was a very small group, I think we still managed to enjoy ourselves.

sj, yep that sounds good to me.

I think the other consideration is that we seem to be loathe to repeat cities, but as we do that, we move further from the cheaper airfare hub cities. At year ten, I think we could go back to those more major cities.

Oh holy cow, $95 is great, I've said it 95 times -- but if it were a priority and we built in a enough time and people we could get it cheaper and have better attendance.

This is the thing. I'm not certain that we could get it all that much cheaper. I think under $99 for a hotel that isn't a total fleabag hotel or doesn't have some other serious limitation like lack of space for our party or a no booze rule is asking a bit much.