Re: [Debconf-team] Accomodation pricing and categories
Didier 'OdyX' Raboud <odyx@debian.org> writes:
> 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".
There is probably a misunderstanding here. Or rather I was not clear
enough as everybody seems to have misunderstood this question. It's
clear that everyone that sleeps at Le Camp also gets food at Le Camp.
But the question that was raised (not by me, but others) was if we
should have a formal option for sponsored people to pay either food or
accomodation themselves because they want to make a contribution towards
the DebConf budget. Or if this should just be handled as a voluntary
donation and not tracked and billed at all.
>
>> * 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.
It seems that everyone agrees on this so far.
>
>> * 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.
I'm not sure here. I think we should aim for a 2/3 usage and at least
for the "Large sleeping-bag rooms" (>=20) I would even promise that and
rather tell people that we are full than pack them to the maximum. With
this we would "loose" 27 beds. To counter the risk of turning down
people I would not advertise the camping space in the begining. So that
we have ~ 60 places in reserve. So if all the cheap accomodation is
full, we can tell people that there is space for camping.
>
>> * 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.
I think if we want to allow this we have to make the smaller rooms more
expensive. Othwerise I think we risk that many sponsored attendees buy a
room upgrade which is somewhat against the principle of sponsoring them.
I would prefer the following: Before the conference only pro and corp
attendees can buy a better room. But if there are any left (and probably
there are), we sell room upgrades upon availability at the front-desk
during the conference for cash. IMHO this would simplify a lot of
things. The only thing we need for this is that we need to keep track
about which bed is occupied by whom for which nights. But we need that
anyway.
I don't think it's a good idea to give free upgrades to sponsored
attendees (or anyone else for that matter). This will only cause
distrust and jealousy and I don't see a fair and transparent algorithm
to decide who deserves an upgrade and who doesn't. One exception to this
is if an upgrade is needed because a lower category is already full and
was not detected at reservation (or reconfirmation) time.
>
> 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.
If we don't depart from what we usually did. Those people won't meet the
sponsorship application deadline. Or did we grant sponsored accomodation
and food after the deadline in special cases?
>
>> IMO there is consensus that sponsored people with special needs
>> should get a free upgrade (…)
>
> Yes.
I think we all agree on this.
>
>> 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.
Cate's proposal to moderately increase the prices sounds good to me. I'm
a bit reluctant to change prices afterwards as we would have to decide
if those that already payed would get part of their money back.
Gaudenz
--
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.
Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
~ Samuel Beckett ~
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