Re: [Debconf-team] Accomodation pricing and categories
Hi Gaudenz, and thanks for this summary,
Le vendredi, 15 février 2013 18.06:00, Gaudenz Steinlin a écrit :
> These are points we might still want to discuss further:
>
> * Should we combine or split payment for accommodation and food?
> The current proposal does not offer an option to pay for food and get
> sponsored accomodation or vice versa. This is to keep it simple. Some
> people argued in favor of offering these as separate options.
I think it doesn't make sense to allow people with accomodation in Le Camp to
"not book" food. As we will get people with external accomodation but coming
to Le Camp for the conference, we will have to require them to pay for "food
at Le Camp".
> * Which rooms should we expect to use for people paying a premium?
I'm not sure I get your question. But my opinion is that the fairer solution
is to make "sponsored accomodation" a monetary discount on whatever category.
More below.
> Which is the best accomodation category that should be free for
> sponsored attendees? The current proposal sets this to "Medium
> sleeping-bag room" (12-16 bed sleeping bag room)
I think that's fine.
> * How should we plan to use the biggest rooms, for now?
> One proposal to make the big and medium sleeping-bag rooms more
> comfortable is to not completely fill them. (…)
I think that's a good plan. Filling them at 1/2 or 2/3 will make these rooms
way more comfortable. That said, I think we should also make it clear to
people booking beds in those that we can't guarantee this low usage: we need
to keep these buffer beds in case of need; we might decide later on that we
want to allocate these beds to get ~ 50 more DebConf attendees.
> * Should we allow sponsored attendees to (cheaply) buy a better room?
> The current proposal also allows sponsored attendees to buy an
> accomodation upgrade. Some people on the list thought this should not be
> allowed.
Definitely yes.
As stated above, I think the fairer option is to allow "sponsored
accomodation" attendees to pay the increase towards better rooms. If we want
(but I'm not sure that's needed) to limit the amount of these, one way would
be to increase the price difference by either making the "sponsored
accomodation beds" artificially cheaper and/or making the upper categories
more expensive.
As I think that we will have worthwile latecomers (like students not knowing
their exams schedules until late June, or young people with epic professional
calendars, etc), I think it's good to keep ourselves the possibility to say
"there, you get sponsored accomodation worth $amount money but as you're late,
your only possibility to come is to pay $amount2 to get a better room".
Enforcing the "only non-sponsored-accomodation can get to good rooms" sounds
like leading to useless blockers to me. As far as I'm concerned, I understand
that we want _more_ people to come at DebConf, not less; so we should think
about ways to enable people to come, not to hinder them from coming.
> IMO there is consensus that sponsored people with special needs
> should get a free upgrade (…)
Yes.
> Once those points are decided, we need to finalize these aspects:
>
> * Pricing
> (…) Some people thought that the prices for the upper categories are
> currently too low.
I don't disagree. Finding the good balance between "filling all categories
equally and making some money" and "trying to make too much money and not fill
the rooms" is tricky to find. The risk of setting too low prices is that we'd
be forced to downgrade people. With higher prices, we can upgrade, which is
fine, but prone to frustration if we upgrade for free.
One way out of that would be to allow us the possibility to take the prices of
the upper rooms down at a later stage if we notice a too low usage of these.
Cheers,
OdyX
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