Re: [Debconf-team] Registration

[Richard Darst <rkd@zgib.net>]

On Sat, Mar 05, 2011 at 11:47:32AM +0000, Adnan Hodzic wrote:
> > Hint for all these: it's *much* easier if we can get non-sponsored
> > people to interact directly with the hotel, rather than being a
> > middle-man for bookings and payments.  This also avoids us having to
> > be in the argument when people want to cancel at the last moment.
> 
> Even though this does ease a lot of things on our side to do it this
> way, we decided we can't just leave people "hanging" like this.
> Especially since we're planning to be in Banja Luka at least a month
> before DebCamp. So we'll actually take care of this.
> Professional/Corporate will all go over us and NGO DIVA, and we'll be
> coordinating everything that needs to be done regarding the same.

How hard would it be for attendees to make reservations directly?  Can
they book a room online on an english site using a credit card?  Can
they call and talk to someone in a language they know if they need to?
Can they take advantage of our bulk discounts?

For the record, the idea is that (at least) the Professional category
would book directly with the hotel.  Since they are "at cost", the
idea was to get people to pay that cost directly as much as possible.

How many other past years have people been told to book directly with
the hotel if they want to pay themselves?  What does the rest of this
list think about booking directly?  If this would significantly reduce
the number people registering as "Professional" it would probably be a
overall negative.

As Holger said, we can always help on behalf of our attendees if
needed.

(Just trying to figure out the relative trade-offs here),

- Richard

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