[Debconf-team] Accomodation/Pricing meeting - some ideas for agenda

[Philipp Hug <debian@hug.cx>]

Hi,

Here are some ideas about what questions we need to answer:

1. Should we set an absolute limit on the number of persons in the big
and medium rooms or just try to move people to better rooms if
available?

Impact Yes: If we set an absolute limit, the total number of possible
attendees will be limited. Assuming we use 2/3 of the beds of big and
medium we'll loose 1/3 of 159 beds, which are 53.
So the total number of possible attendees will be reduced from 325
(ignoring camping) to 272.

Impact No: Some people might be more unhappy about the standards in
the big rooms.

2. General pricing ideas
a) Do the self-paying attendees need to cover their full cost?
* Covering their full cost would mean paying their room for the whole
rental period, as we probably can't rent it to another person and have
to pay it anyway.
* Should it also include costs from daytrip, formal dinner... or do we
assume this is sponsored?
* Can we charge less than what we pay for some room categories to fill
them better? e.g. trying to sell the dorm really cheap to selfpaying
students?
* should we differenciate between self-paying and professionals, were
self-paying only pay differential costs + some extra?

b) Should the goal be maximum profit or to make the distribution of beds fairer?

3. Upgrades
a) Should we allow upgrades during reservation?
Impact Yes: booking and billing system required because manual
processing will be too much work. Clarification needed about which
categories can be booked.

Impact No: some people may be unhappy

b) Should we allow upgrades on-site, if availability permits?
Impact Yes: better use of good category beds, less crowded cheap beds.
First come, first serve? People who arrive later will be
disadvantaged.

Impact No: Unused beds in better categories can either be given away
for free and cause unhappyness for those who didn't get an upgrade or
not used at all which is a waste.

c) Upgrade pricing:
Should we price the upgrades a bit higher than the difference to base
price? (depends on a))

Impact Yes: More money for DebConf and better availability of rooms.
Impact No: Some categories might be overbooked

4. Sponsored Accomodation

Which categories are used for sponsored accomodation?
In general, I think we should reseve the following rooms for sponsored
attendees: nordique_medium down to sleeping_bag_big

What will you get, when you book sponsored accomodation?
Ideas:
a) nordique_medium down to sleeping_bag_big, in order of confirmation
b) assigned by magic scheme (cate)
c) allow attendees to choose. (for a fee?)

5. Pricing proposals for professional/self-paying attendees:

a) Simple single/double/other
nordique_single: CHF 60 pp / 60 p room
nordique_double CHF 40 pp / 80 p room
sleeping_bag_double: CHF 35 pp / 70 p room
stay_with_sponsored: CHF 30 pp (or maybe even CHF 25)

If we fill all the single/doubles we would make around 11k for rooms +
20k for food, which is more or less what we have in the budget + the
extra money from the stay_with_sponsored category
Note: we need to reserve some of those rooms for attendees with
special needs. I'd prefer if those are in the double-category as we do
only have 4 singles.

# Should it be possible to book a double for 1 person by paying for
the full room? (if yes, we need to decide if breakfast is still
calculated by person, then)

b) extend this down to other categories:
nordique_small: CHF ?? pp
nordique_medium: CHF ?? pp

c) extend even more...

Philipp