How the Westin fared on February 2 (Warning! Contains SCIENCE!)
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We had been worried that the rush would fill the Westin to capacity in minutes. As it turned out, they continued to take reservations into the following morning. The last rooms were sold (and the hotel even stretched our room block a bit) about 24 hours after the reservations opened.
Scientists love to make graphs. Here's a graph of % of room block allocation for each day of the convention vs. the number of hours after February 2, 0900 h.
What we learned:
1) Our estimate of the demand for rooms for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights was spot on.
2) Obviously there is a higher demand for rooms on the Tuesday before the convention. We'll try to get more rooms in 2011 on that date, but it is very dependent on what sort of group is in the hotel ahead of us and when they move out.
3) We overestimated the demand for rooms on the Monday following the convention, so next year we are probably going to have fewer of those on our contract.
Anthrocon is dedicated to continual improvement each year. We will use this data to fine-tune our registration process as we plan for the future.
You are correct on all counts!
as just a side note.
the main hotel for DragonCon '10 also sold out fast.
ie the day the con ended in '09
apparently MANY people are willing to sacrifice to go to a convention
"apparently MANY people are willing to sacrifice to go to a convention"
Fortunately, Anthrocon no longer accepts human sacrifice.
"Anthrocon. The largest furry convention in the world, each year in Pittsburgh PA, with over three thousand attendees. You'd better bring your fursuit. You'd better bring your three wolf shirt. And you'd better bring your Visa, because they don't take human sacrifice.
Visa: If's everywhere you want to be."
I think the lack of interest in Monday night is due to a self-fulfilling prophecy of "well everybody's going to be going home, so I might as well go home too". Everyone starts leaving Monday morning, and behold, there's nobody around Monday night to hang out with, therefore the theory is self-justified.
I really thought I was getting ahead of the game by getting in on Wednesday, but it seems that it is a rather popular arrival day. Perhaps that is why my floor keeps going up every year despite the fact that I'm arriving at around the same day/time (2006 - floor 7, 2007 & 2008 - floor 9, 2009 - floor 11). Eventually I'm going to end up on the 23rd floor despite checking in on Wednesday!
The mentality of people trying to obtain lower floors by arriving earlier helps out in that it creates a large number of people there before the convention - providing the perfect time to socialize without having to worry about events or panels.
For me though, as a person who works overnights, I need that extra day to adjust my sleeping schedule. Typically, I leave work at 0700h Wednesday morning, grab my gear, and wait for my friend to pick me up from my place by 0800h. We grab breakfast on the way to the con, and end up getting to the hotel at around 1400h. By the time the hotel allows me to check in and settle us into our room, I've been awake for around 24 hours.
...and you'd think that I'd sleep well that night? Nope. It's difficult to sleep during the night after that. Typically Wednesday night I get around 4 hours of genuine sleep, followed by maybe 5 hours Thursday and Friday nights. Saturday I can wing about six hours, and Sunday I can get a full night's sleep. But Monday I leave, drive all the way home, unpack, settle back into my apartment, and then I have to stay up all of Monday night so I can sleep Tuesday during the day and work Tuesday night.
Of course, there are also a lot of us who come tuesday or wednesday because we're needed on setup crew on thursday.... 
I love the generalization "Scientists love to make graphs." I will include that in my documentary about Scientists when I become a famous David Attenborough and/or Steve Irwin type person.
why is it that the tuesday before the convention was pretty much sold out? seems like a popular day, but why? o3o; is it to get to know the convention places before the con takes place or somethin?
The main reason the Tuesday before the convention is sold out is because of another group that is using the convention center before AC.
The American Society of Agricultural & Biological Engineers 2010 Annual International Meeting, it's running from June 20th, and ends on the 23rd. So pretty much all of the attendees for that are staying at the Westin are still there on the 22nd (Tuesday), making it much harder for any of us to stay on Tuesday.
Now granted the majority of people come one day before the con, though anyone that wanted to come in on Tuesday is kind of out of luck. As the graph that kage posted shows, there was a good amount of people that did want to come in on Tuesday.
-Silverwulf
I'll bet their chairman made a bunch of graphs, too.
The rooms for Tuesday had to have been booked before the AC block even opened, dunno if a bunch of people just jumped the gun and paid full rate, or if there's some other function going on. Either way, I was severely disappointed, I made my reservation at 8:02 am (9:02 am EST) and there were no rooms on Tuesday... oh well...
Lessons "Learned" - and decisions made from those lessons - depend on how you interpret the data which the graph depicts.
It would be more informative if we knew how big each day's room block was; after all, if the block size for Tuesday is only 20% of the size of the room block for Saturday, the interpretation might be quite different. And without comparative graphs showing the same data for the other hotels, and a grand "super graph" showing the results for all hotels combined, the conclusions drawn will only apply to the desires and behaviours of those attendees staying at the Westin, and cannot be applied to the population of AnthroCon attendees as a whole.
I am not surprised at the low results for a Monday-night stay; the Con is finished, the interesting personalities (artists, GOH, Con Staff and Chairman) will have departed town as soon as the truck is loaded, or will not be in a mood to 'Socialise' with the general body of remaining fans, instead reverting to Private Citizen personas, perhaps going to see Kennywood or the national aviary or the zoo, before leaving town. In short - if there isn't any real "fannish" activity on Monday, most fans will not justify the expense of another $130-plus dollars for another night away from home and family.
For all intent and purposes - after Sunday Night, THE PARTY IS OVER.
I'll only say that, for the 'outliers' of Tuesday night before and Monday night after, the graph may be misleading. For the 'core' con days, the graph is useful. It has already given Kage and the BoD the information that they need more rooms on Tuesday night and, apparently, not as many on Monday. That's already useful data.
The fact that the graph only includes the Westin may indicate one of two things: Kage didn't have similar information from the satellite hotels... or that he wanted to retain what little sanity he has by not including them. In some ways, I don't know that a 'supergraph' would be specifically useful: the occupancy rates and speed with they filled up could be misleading. With 550 rooms in the Westin and 50 rooms in the Courtyard (reportedly, in both cases), one room reserved at the Courtyard equates to eleven rooms at the Westin: 2% in each case. And, the Courtyard is ten bucks a night more than the Westin: how do you include that factor in the graph?
The graph gives Kage and the Board the information they're looking for at this time: what changes they need in their hotel contract with the Westin. Separate graphs might give them additional information for the three satellite hotels but, bluntly, the Westin is the con hotel and it's the most important one for the BoD to work on.
You want MORE graphs?
Actually, Charlie is right on all accounts. We do not have ready minute-by-minute access to hotel pickup numbers. That is a Starwood thing.
Originally we had no rooms at all on Tuesday, but when I saw people here talking about arriving then, I asked the hotel what they could do. The hotel was nearly full on Tuesday, but they were able to squeeze five -- and only five -- rooms out for us. That's why we couldn't have any more.
I've already asked to amend our 2011 contract, but first we have to see what group is in the hotel ahead of us. They kind of have dibs on the rooms that night.
You want MORE graphs?
Oh, yes, please! I find them endlessly fascinating. Besides the data and trends which they illustrate, they also reveal much about the person(s) doing the collecting and interpreting of the data, and how they extrapolate their conclusions.
Or Pie Charts. Pie charts will do just as nicely.
...We do not have ready minute-by-minute access to hotel pickup numbers. That is a Starwood thing.
Ah, well...if one doesn't have the data, one doesn't have the data - can't argue with that.
Originally we had no rooms at all on Tuesday, but when I saw people here talking about arriving then, I asked the hotel what they could do...they were able to squeeze five -- and only five -- rooms out for us...
So that particular roomblock hit capacity almost immediately, and it is a safe bet that if more rooms were available, they would have been sold; but how do you know how many more rooms to ask for on Tuesday? I gather that the data collection system only records reservation details for reservations made, and not for requests. It would be highly useful to know how many callers asked, and were turned down - and of that group, how many settled for a Wednesday night check-in, and how many may have said no thanks, and tried to get a Tuesday check-in at the Courtyard, it being next nearest - or at the Omni, it being the cheapest (assuming that option was even available at those hotels). Such data might make it easier to guesstimate how many Tuesday rooms to ask for - but I'm sure you already knew that, the data just isn't available.
Furry Fans are, like most people, going to try to stay at the event hotel for a variety of reasons, the most common reason believed to be because everything is right there...and Furry Fans are notorious for being, - um - "energy saving". Another thing Furry Fans are notorious for is being, shall we say, "frugal" - at least when it comes to paying for room and board, and if denied the opportunity to stay at the Westin, what was the secondary choice for most attendees? The Courtyard (nearby), the Omni (reasonably nearby, and cheapest, but perhaps viewed as somewhat "stuffy"), or the DoubleTree (with the attached 7-11 and shuttle)?
Regarding the Omni - I had stayed there for the 2nd and 3rd Pittsburgh AnthroCons, but of course since the place was occupied by the MENSA affair last year, only dropped by this last time to dine; I asked the receptionists, bell staff, and concierge on Sunday how the MENSA Convention went over, and how they compared to Furry Fans as guests...and was advised that the Furries were absolutely Charming, in comparison to serving the MENSAns - and that the staff looked forward to us returning for next year. 
Just goes to show how many furries Pittsburgh will be buried under during the con.
Now if only there were better restaurant options open LATER. Philly > Pittsburgh.
In response to Tinintri's comment, anyone know if another diner style resteraunt happened to open up where steel city was? That's the only place I ate the entire con because I don't like subs, cheesesteak, and pizza delivery is expensive.
What was wrong with the Chinese restaurants?
Liu Huang is almost next to Furnando's, and the Golden Palace
is about a block further on the left in that direction.
I have a vague recollection of a Greek and a Mexican place a little
further down on that same street.
Walk a few blocks after Furnando's, and there's LOTS of places
to eat. Being less picky, I didn't need them-but they were THERE.
Two questions, which may/may not have been answered, meaning I may/may not be an idiot.
1) Will the room block for the courtyard and westin be expanded to more rooms?
2) If so, when could we expect these to open up?
A staff member can correct me if I'm wrong, but once the room block for the hotels is filled, one has to search for another hotel to stay in. They do not renegotiate the contract that they originally made with each hotel.
There have been times when they have expanded room blocks but I believe in the case of the Westin they have all the rooms they are going to get. It may be the same for the Courtyard. Rooms may become available if there are cancellations but there is a waiting list for those rooms if that happens. I doubt they would expand any of the room blocks right now anyway because there are still plenty of rooms at the Omni and Doubletree. Those hotels would need to sell out before any of the blocks are expanded.
That's generally the case. At this point, the Omni and the Doubletree are your best options for a hotel room; do not count on an expanded room block for the Westin or Courtyard.
--Chi
A few questions about room blocks mentioned here.
I take it room blocks are the amount of rooms a hotel allows for the AC discount rate?
Then, even though the block may be full, sold out, a hotel may still have rooms at normal rates, right?
How often do the rooms outside of the block, at normal rates, sell out?
So while Westin is long gone. The Courtyard, while the room block is full, out of fear of waiting I booked a room from the 24th to the 28th at their normal rate. The rate wasn't too much more than the discount for those days, seems worth it to have a hotel next to the center. Will these normal rate rooms at the Courtyard sell out quickly? Only negative to this, I had to pay in full, and after 1 day from now, no refunds.
I haven't gone to many cons, just FC2010, so at first I was a bit confused when this site said the Courtyard was sold out, but the moment you remove the group code, they had rooms. Even if they open more blocks, or cancellations, from reading the forum here, there also can be wait list for those.
We have no control over rooms outside of our room block. The hotel can charge whatever they want for them.
I'm sorry, I hope it didn't sound like I had a beef with the pricing I paid and limitations. Coming into this new, I just didn't know how things worked, like the existence of room blocks. With the room block sold out, I understand what the hotel offers is out of AC's hands. I just got mixed up as stumbled into all this. Such as when I visited Anthrocon's site to look up the hotels and read the Courtyard was sold out, I first thought that meant the entire hotel, not just the room block.
The hotels rarely if ever give a single group every room in the building. Many hotels, ours included, have long-term contracts with corporate clients (and in the case of the Westin, sports leagues) and are required to have rooms available if one of the clients should show up. Also, upper management always likes to hang onto a small number of rooms that they keep at the highest "rack rate" for economic reasons.
Once our block is sold, the remaining rooms are sold at increasingly higher costs, until all rooms are spoken for.
He blinded me... with Science!
Seriously though, an interesting graph. The 'bunching up' on the left side was to be expected: you might want to expand the graph showing the first five hours only. If I'm reading it correctly (the bunching makes it difficult), Anthrocon achieved a 60% occupancy rate (roughly) for all days other than the 22nd and 28th by half-past twelve, 80% by 3:00 PM and (virtually) 100% in 24 hours. Most other cons (of any type) usually take weeks to fill up their hotels.
Perhaps you should send an expanded copy of this graph to the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce. I've read that there was supposed to be a major hotel built along with the DLCC, but they didn't feel they could justify the cost... and now they're wondering why the DLCC isn't getting the utilization they wanted and were hoping for. (I can't swear that's true, but I did read it somewhere.)