>While I agree that $159 is better than $239, that's *very* high for a Vegas hotel, even a resort. Bellagio and the Venetian don't charge anywhere close to that, and I would certainly classify those properties as "nice hotel resorts". Without checking, I'd surmise that with the number of attendees DevCon normally brings, that rate could easily have been halved.
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>And, while I'm on the subject -- "a nice hotel resort that can host a conference like this". Are you inferring that there are no Strip hotels that could host this conference? I'd be *very* surprised if, for starters, Mandalay Bay, Caesar's, or the LV Hilton (which is next door to the LV Convention Center) didn't have the capability to host this, and for a HECK of a lot less than the Marriott is going to charge Advisor for *their* facilities -- especially with the number of room nights DevCon would bring to the table.
Hi Evan. You are entitled to your opinion, but I must clarify some facts for those reading this thread. The main hotels on the Vegas strip have prices that change every week depending on the events of that week. The Venetian is almost always over $200/night, the Bellagio can be double that. The less expensive casino hotels like the Luxor can be under $150/night, but not usually on the weekend and are usually only cheap on limited weeks when there is no events in the area. If you look at the Luxor web site, you'll see it is very often that rates are over $150/night, sometimes over $200/night. September and October are very busy months in Vegas as well, so you will find that $159/night including weekend nights is a very good rate for Sept/Oct.
Casio hotels are generally not set up to handle a large conference, only small business events of under 200 attendees. For the bigger events and conference, it is more typical to to host it at the Hilton convention center or a place like the Mariott Resort. And before you state assumptions about what casino hotels would give as a group rate for hosting an event, I suggest you do the research first. I have attendeed and spoke at events in the casino hotels, and the group rates are not discounted anywhere near half the rate, usually it is a very small discount. I'm not trying to debate your opinion, just clarifying facts. My only involvement with the decision making for location planning with Advisor is that I suggested to them that the VFP team's #1 pick would be Vegas in October, and thanks to Advisor that is what they chose for VFP DevCon 2004.
