PLEASE READ before reserving your hotel room

Our hotels, the Westin Convention Center and the Doubletree City Center Pittsburgh, are now open for reservations! The beautiful Omni William Penn already had a group in ahead of us for this year, but they've already got us set up for 2010, so those of you who fell in love with that hotel should not fret.

This year, both of our hotels will require a down payment equal to one night's room and tax at the time the reservation is made. This will not be refunded if the reservation is canceled and it is non-transferable, so please, plan your trip carefully, and do not rush to reserve a room unless you are certain that you will be going. And please read on -- the information below is of critical importance for all hotel guests.

The down payment will be applied to your bill when you check out. In other words, if you stay for five nights, you will only pay for four when you check out, since one night is already paid for.

Once again, the payment is not transferable and not refundable, so once you make your reservation you are committed. This is necessary in order to avoid what we call "speculative reservations," which has been a growing problem. People rush to reserve a room without even knowing if they are actually going to attend the convention; they want to have space, though, just in case they change their minds. Later on they cancel their reservations, and almost always do so when it is too late for other people to make travel plans. Last year we tried having a deposit due at a point in the Spring, but that did not fix the problem. The hotel still filled up quickly, stayed full until the Spring, and then suffered a massive rush of cancellations. This created more headaches for us than it solved, so this year we have no choice but to require a down payment right up front. There has to be some penalty for cancelling so that people will not reserve rooms that they have little or no intention of occupying. It is what airlines have been doing for years, and now we ourselves have come to understand why they do it.

It is important to understand what non-transferable means. It means that if you cancel, you cannot have the hotel apply the deposit to another reservation. You will lose that money, and the other person will have to pay another deposit for the room. Now, Furries like to share rooms with their friends, and it might seem easy enough just to add a second name (or third or fourth) to the reservation so that said friend(s) can check in. Anthrocon urges extreme caution with this! The name of the original reservation-holder remains attached to the reservation, and that means that this person will be held responsible for anything that happens in the room, even if he or she is not present at the convention. This is something to keep in mind when offering "crash space" to someone that you may not know very well. If that person decides to carve his name into the headboard or hangs his fursuit from the sprinkler head and causes a flood and yours is the name on the reservation, you will be the one who gets banned from the convention. Again, CHOOSE YOUR ROOMMATES WISELY.

We also strongly recommend that all names associated with the room be put on the reservation. This is actually a request from the hotel and arises from safety concerns, plus the fact that they had a number of messages in the past -- some of them emergency messages from home -- and had no idea where to contact the people in question since their names were not in the rooming list. To help with this, Anthrocon is going to instruct the front desk to provide the custom-made room key cards only to those whose names are in the registration database.

Any financial arrangements between room-sharers is up to the parties in question to work out. Please do not ask Anthrocon or the hotel to get involved! We cannot help you with it. Every year we see agonized pleas on our room-share board from people who had roommates back out on them at the eleventh hour, leaving them holding the bag for rooms that they could not afford on their own. We recommend that if your friend agrees to room with you, you might consider collecting a down payment from that friend. After all, you had to pay a deposit -- why shouldn't all parties in the room share the financial responsibility up front?

Finally, please be reminded of the policies that Anthrocon has established in order to maintain its reputation as being Exemplary Guests at our hotels:

The person in whose name a room is rented is solely responsible for the conduct of all individuals in the room as well as for the condition of the room. Excessive trash, soiling or other damage to hotel property, or any circumstance that may present a hazard to hotel housekeeping staff may result in permanent loss of Anthrocon membership privileges.

Both Westin and Doubletree Hotel Housekeeping staff are required by corporate policy to inspect every room once per day, even if the room is not to be serviced. Housekeepers will not begin their rounds until 10:00 AM. Thereafter they will initially bypass rooms with "do not disturb" signs on the doors, but at the end of their rounds they must return to those rooms and will knock on the door. Attendees must allow housekeeping staff access to the room at that time. That means that even if the "do not disturb" sign is displayed, after 10:00 AM the room must at some point be inspected and serviced (if necessary) by the end of housekeeping rounds.

If you agree, then click on the "hotels" link on the left to make your reservation.