If you can't attend, and you have a hotel reservation...

Every year we have an avalanche of last-minute cancellations of hotel rooms for the convention, and by last-minute, I mean within a week or two of the convention. I know that there is a certain percentage of people who have some unhappy event occur at the 11th hour that prevents them from going, but the rest, I suspect, are people who have known for weeks or even months that they would not be able to attend, but did not bother to cancel their hotel reservations until the day before.

This leaves us with a number of rooms that suddenly become available well after another attendee is able to make travel arrangements or to arrange time off of work. I have been wracking my brain for years to try to think of a practical means (with a very strong emphasis on practical) to solve this dilemma, yet all I've been able to come up with is to appeal to folks to be considerate of their fellow congoers.

This is a polite request on behalf of those hopeful folks who are on the Westin's waiting list: if you are not going to be able to attend Anthrocon this year and you have reserved a room, please cancel that reservation now, or at least as soon as you are certain that you won't be joining us. You will be making someone else very happy.

(As a small aside, each year I am given a list of all canceled reservations which includes the date and time that the cancellation was made. Again, I fully understand how life can thrown us some curve balls that disrupt our best-laid plans, but should I notice the same name appearing more than once on the "cancelled at the last minute" list, my feelings will be hurt.)

(As a smaller aside, please be reminded that hotel room reservations are not transferable. In other words, you can't just have your name taken off the reservation and another person's put on. That's terribly unfair to the people who are on the waiting list.)