jimmythesaint wrote:
I'm a bit perplexed by this announcement. We hear that badge sales might be capped if trends continue, but as of writing this, there are 25 hotels available (!!!) in the housing portal. Granted, none are downtown, but there was a post just yesterday of someone snagging a JW Marriott through the portal.
Combine this with the posts about overall a smaller quantity of hotel rooms in the Indianapolis area compared to 5 years ago, and I'm curious.
Is attendance really that high if so many outlying rooms are still available? Or have that many more hotels joined the portal than before, increasing the number of rooms that appear?
I suspect it's the latter, but the numbers nerd in me would pay an extra amount on my badge price to see the internal projections and planning spreadsheets. I won't talk, I swear!
Allow me to solve for you "The Mystery of There Being Lots of Hotels in the Housing Portal":
* Closet hotel in the portal as of writing - 6.7 miles away, $149-179 a night for Wednesday - Monday
* Cheapest hotel in the portal as of writing - $118 a night, 10.4 miles away for Wednesday - Monday
Now look at what's available on, say, Hotels.com (similar results available on other hotel booking services):
https://www.hotels.com/search/searchmap.html?resolved-location=CITY%3A1432803%3AUNKNOWN%3AUNKNOWN&destination-id=1432803&q-destination=Indianapolis,%20Indiana,%20United%20States%20of%20America&q-check-in=2017-08-16&q-check-out=2017-08-21&q-rooms=1&q-room-0-adults=2&q-room-0-children=0
Rooms available for $60 a night and up, and comparable ones within 6 miles.
So - you get no benefit from using the portal for these hotels. You don't save money. You don't get closer. What you do get is locked into a room with penalties for cancelation. No thanks!
The housing portal is only useful for getting in block rooms in downtown Indy for cheap. Otherwise you're better off without it.
There were plenty of rooms of a similar distance and price last year as well at this time.