When it comes to a place like the embassy I always list the truthful amount of people staying since they usually are strict on drinks and breakfast on the weekend when its not business travelers. Since gamers are notoriously cheap I assume the embassy in Indy is the same way all week so I listed how many were in my party.
This will be my first GenCon, I'm just booking an airbnb apartment for the week. Booking.com and Expedia are showing the city like 96% booked at this point and I don't want to drop 2k on 5 nights (as posh as it would be..)
I was such in a hurry to book that I forgot to change occupancy from 1 to 2... BUT I added my husband as additional guest... oh well, at worse I'll get a huge breakfast and eat in my room :)
We booked a King bed so we should be fine :)
(Plus, rooms through the block will cost considerably less than 2k for 5 nights.)
There's no real rush right now; what a lot of us are seeing are rooms that hotels simply haven't blocked off for Gen Con. Usually hotels get those blocked off right away and leave a tiny handful available, or as was the case with the Embassy Suites they simply don't get them blocked off in time before people notice and take advantage. What we're seeing is just a smattering of what will eventually be opened up.
The real rush will happen in January when the in-block rooms become available. And if I understand things correctly, that'll happen within seconds to minutes of that.
All the Marriotts are fully booked; either from the GenCon blocks or corporations securing their own blocks for business travelers because they know that the convention eats up a lot of real estate. That's why you don't see them available. It's the same story with most of the close-in hotels.
There isn't any room for regular travelers; that's why when hotels like the Embassy open up a block early we get excited.
I'm interested in the notion of simply "just" booking an AirBnB for the week; do you have one booked already? I can't believe that's going to be easy either. My experience is that the inventory on AirBnB is just as slim AND much more expensive because they're not constrained by rack rates like a hotel.
Last year we had two different bad experiences with GenCon AirBnB's where we "instant booked" but then for whatever reason (probably money) the owners pulled the property and cancelled our reservations. My guess is that folks hit them up with an offer of more $$$.
just got a cancellation notice:
Dear David Campbell: On Monday, August 22 the Embassy Suites Indianapolis Downtown discovered a system error that allowed reservations to be booked over dates we are fully committed for a citywide convention. Unfortunately, because of our contractual obligation to this organization, we are unable to honor any reservation made that include, but are not limited to the dates of August 15-20, 2017. Our Reservations Terms & Conditions policy states the following: We reserve the right to cancel or modify reservations where it appears the customer has engaged in fraudulent or inappropriate activity or under other circumstances where it appears the reservations contain or resulted from a mistake or error. The reservations were able to be made due to a reservation system error and thus, your reservation(s) will be cancelled. We sincerely apologize for this situation and understand the inconvenience this will cause. Please understand that we take this matter very seriously and are working diligently to resolve this issue to ensure that this does not happen again in the future. Thank you. Sincerely, Embassy Suites Indianapolis Downtown Management Team
What the hell!
Did anyone else get the cancellation letter? They said something about the fact that they did not have the right to give away those rooms for those dates.
Whoa.
Oh, man, I didn't see that coming. I think I'm glad now I didn't find out about that glitch in time; I'd have blown my top at that letter.
I called them and they said my reservation isn't cancelled. We will see.
I have been on the phone with them for 40 minutes now. We will see what they say...
I logged into the website and it shows my reservation was cancelled. What a bunch of assholes.
I find it incredibly hard to believe that they are fully booked for the convention for the block rates, as rack rate rooms showed up prior to the event in years past.
Yep, mine's cancelled too. What a bummer.
Be interesting to see if anyone keeps their reservations. Also see if the ones that do were the ones who did or didn't go through the 3rd party website. I went direct and got the cancellation email like a lot of others. I'm pissed and if I thought i had a chance of getting anywhere i'd call embassy and bark a blue streak. Unfortunately i think this falls under category of small print exists as a reason for companies to fuck over the little people.
If this had happened after the housing lottery i'd understand as it would seem a glitch for rooms that likely sold in the lottery. Before (now) this seems like bullshit.
When I called the Embassy after booking, I was told by someone in the Sales Department that the rooms not held back in the block were released early in error and that they were now (then?) completely booked, but would be honoring the reservations made even though they screwed up.
I get that there was an error, but DO NOT lie to me. That's a load of stinking, steaming crap, and I will be passing along my not-inconsiderable ire ASAP.