• Personal needs.  People with disabilities or other medical issues who may have difficulties when staying remotely because it is difficult for long trips and/or they may have medication that needs to be kept in a refrigerator.
  
• Convenience.  Staying offsite and having to rely on taxis or public transportation means I need to pad out my plans with extra time for the to/from commute.
  
• Safety.  A lot of attendees like to partake at the nearby watering holes for a drink (or more) during the con.  Obviously being able to walk (stumble) back to your hotel room is a lot easier than getting a taxi or driving back to your hotel under the influence (PLEASE DON'T DO THIS).
  
• Being near the action.  Unlike a lot of conventions where things happen 9-5 and then everyone scatters for the night, Gen Con is non-stop from Thursday morning until Sunday afternoon.  There have been multiple times that I've thought "hey, it's 2AM, I want to do a Magic draft".  Being able to simply walk over to the ICC makes that much easier.
  
• Easier Coordination.  If I'm sharing a room with 3 other people, it is a lot easier to come and go as I please if I can walk to the hotel instead of trying to coordinate car rides with people.
  

Edit: Spelling

Trip advisor shows 31 hotels within a mile of the LVCC. Not to mention many of them are larger hotels with thousands of rooms.

Many more are within 1.5 miles and many have monorail service door to door with the LVCC.
 

The problem, I think, really comes down to pricing.  Yes, the lottery system, or any system, is not perfect.  However, we have a lot of people that want to stay in a downtown hotel.  Those that got shut out of downtown due to bad lottery luck are upset (understandably) and the prices that local hotels are charging outside the hotel block are too much for many people.  Sadly, supply and demand win here and prices outside the block will not be coming down anytime soon.

I'm not going to restart the age-old "where should Gen Con move to" conversation.  I was simply answering garkhal's question about why walkability matters.  To many, it does matter, and I gave some reasons why.

The monorail hotels are in addition to them.

Frankly if you're too drunk to get a cab the bar should have cut you off.

On the Convenience issue - yes you need to add travel time.  BUT if having to add travel time, say 20 min before and after means MORE PEOPLE can come, then to Me that should be a no-brainer.. 

Out of curiosity has anyone been to Vegas (insert the city you're championing for here I guess if you like) for one of the gaming conventions out there?  Or moved around outside the strip?  Checked out North Las Vegas?  Etc.

I'll add to the walkability issue the following --

Minatures Gaming - these games often involve a lot of gear that needs to get moved to and from the hall.  Being attached makes this much much easier on the participant.  I have friends who flat out won't go if they're not attached because they are minature gamers.

Overall I think the issue is that walkability is huge deal-breaker for some people, and totally not an issue for others. 

The bigger issue is that many people in this thread treat the entire system as "Great!" or "Worst Evah!" based soley on their own selfish wants.  As a person who was literally hosed out of a room by the Great Glitch of 2015, who's had both an attached hotel and been in the boondocks, this system is simply the fairest one yet.

Some people find navigating the Indy homeless late a night a scary proposition for your kids. Would you let them walk 6 blocks in Indy alone at night?

I get it that people who drive dont want Gen Con to leave Indy. I live in vegas and I dont want it to leave Indy either.

But the convention has outgrown Indy. You have no light rail. No reliable safe public transport. And not nearly enough close hotels. Without these things the problem will only get worse.

There ARE other options. Gen Con needs to consider them.

So. Pondering why Gen Con might not consider moving.

It is /tremendously/ successful right where it is. Moving may or may not improve different situations but flat out, as is, the convention is a success. 

What brings my thoughts up on this is that, in our middling smallish town, we have a /superb/ restaurant. The seating is limited, there is /always/ a wait. I asked why they didn't A) expand or move locations or B) open a second location and the owner replied simply that he was happy with it as it was. Hugely successful, well-liked, building paid for, contracts negotiated, etc. He said he had no intention of ever changing it.

Yes, much  MUCH smaller scale. But it could very well be that Mr. Adkison doesn't feel like revisiting the bankruptcy courts anytime soon (SoCal and Celebration) and is happy with gen con's growth the way it is. It will, after all, limit itself once it reaches a certain point. No more room for games/exhibitors/attendees.

IMHO, it has already reached the "certain point" where the problems of Indy are exceeding the ability of the city to fix them. As someone pointed out, Indy has LOST 1000 rooms since 2011. Yet the attendance has more than doubled. This is a situation that cannot be easily fixed and doing nothing is not an option.

Except that it IS. There is nothing at all that says they HAVE to accommodate everyone who wants to go.

*shrug*

IMO, Gen Con is doing the best that they can with a tough situation. 

When you outgrow a city you fix the issues or move.

Also, moving from Milwaukee to Indy had less of an impact because Indy was in the same general region, had better facilities, and Indy is embracing the idea of being a convention town.

Yes, Gen Con is now showing the upper limits of what Indy can host, but the next move (as has been discussed may times before) is not as easy of an upgrade as the Milwaukee to Indy move.

If you live in Vegas how are the other gaming conventions there doing?

Of course Gencon is not remotely near CES #'s.

We could handle it easily.