Westin Hotel Registration Room Rate Problem

Anthrocon only "blocks" a certain number of rooms on each night. Only those rooms are available at the Anthrocon rate. When those rooms are all sold, the hotel shows "no availability in the Anthrocon room block." The remaining rooms are still available at the normal rate.

When that happens, Anthrocon has to request that more rooms be added to its room block. Usually that takes a single phone call, after which additional rooms are available on that given night for our special rate. There is a challenge, however: the hotel, due to numerous contractual obligations at various levels, is never able to give us every single room in the hotel for our block. They are required by Westin's corporate HQ to retain a small number of rooms at the regular rate. I don't know why; it's some hotel-management thing. Thus, we will reach a point on a given day when we cannot add any more rooms to our block, even though there are still rooms physically available in the hotel. Those are going to sell at the normal rate, no matter what.

At this time, since I only made the phone call 15 minutes ago and left a message, I do not know if we are able to add any more rooms to our block on Wednesday. As soon as I know I will tell you -- promise. There are a few options available if indeed we cannot have any more rooms:

* You can either get the room at the very expensive normal rate.

* You can arrive one day later (on Thursday).

* You can book a room for just Wednesday night at the Omni Hotel nearby.

* You can book an arrival on Thursday and wait and see if there are cancellations that will open up a room on Wednesday night, at which point you can ask to have Wednesday added to your reservation. We have no way of predicting whether or not you will be able to.

And it'll still not be enough!