Con Season on a Budget: Staying There

Last month, we talked about getting there: getting to your favorite conventions more cheaply (because I am the queen of cheap travel!). This month, let’s talk about staying there!

The Age-Old Question: Host Hotel or Cheap Hotel?

In an effort to cut costs, it’s completely understandable to shop around for a better price on lodgings, whether that’s another hotel or perhaps an AirBnB. Host hotels are often somewhat expensive. Conventions want to impress their attendees with a nice experience, which isn’t often cheap.

In my experience, host hotels cost more than $100/night, sometimes more than $200/night, depending on the size of the convention. This can be tough if you’re on a tight budget.

There are some things to consider, however, when deciding where to stay. Obviously, many of those things have to do with you, the con-goer.

What is the actual cost savings?

Saving $300 over the entire trip is a different thing than saving $45.

What is the price of that savings?

Everything has its price. In this case, staying offsite will mean inconvenience for you.

Will you have to walk back to your lodgings? What will this look like if you hit a late night party and have to do the walk at 3am?

Will you need to Uber or Lyft or taxi to the convention? What will that cost? Does the daily cost of transport come in significantly lower than the savings on the lodging to begin with? Don’t assume you’ll only be making one round-trip, either. There will be at least one day where you’ll go back twice, whether because you forgot something, because you just need to get away from all the people, or maybe for a wardrobe change.

Speaking of wardrobe, will you be cosplaying? If so, will your costume fit comfortably in a vehicle while you’re wearing it? Will you be bringing a change of clothes in case you get tired of wearing the costume? How will carrying that (or the costume, if you change) around all day and night feel?

If you are within walking distance of the host hotel, will the weather be conducive to walking in your costume? High temperatures or ice on the sidewalk should be taken into consideration. Heat stroke isn’t fun at all, and neither is an unintended meeting with the ground.

One final thing to consider about your own experience is what you might be missing by staying offsite. A lot of really cool things happen spontaneously. Drinks with authors, room parties, networking, spontaneous karaoke in the lobby with a drink (or eight). Many conventions have 24-hour programming, as well. Think about whether it’s okay with you to potentially miss these things.

Not staying onsite doesn’t always just impact you, though. In some cases, it can affect the convention too. The number of room nights the event can guarantee will affect its bargaining strength and could potentially bring the cost of the rooms down. On the other side, not making its commitment to the hotel could lead to losing the space altogether. Let’s talk about how all that happens.

How It Works

Keeping in mind that, like any sort of agreement, a contract between a convention and a hotel can go a lot of different ways. Here is how it basically works though.

When a convention enters into a contract with a hotel, it is guaranteeing that convention goers will buy a certain number of room nights in the hotel. This is called the convention’s “room block.” For small and mid-sized conventions, it’s incredibly important that they make their room block. Here’s why.

In return for the guarantee of those room nights, the hotel gives the convention an allocated amount of space to hold its event, often at a significantly reduced rate or even sometimes for free. This is often called the “con space” or “con floor.” This is where all the fun stuff happens: the panels, the social gatherings, the workshops, the autograph signings.

If many con-goers choose to stay offsite, the convention could be in danger of not filling their room block. If that happens, the hotel may reduce the amount of con space available for the event or charge extra for the space itself. In some cases, such as if the convention cannot afford the new cost of the space, the convention could lose the hotel altogether, which would mean a canceled event. (This would suck for you if you’d bought plane tickets to attend the convention, because the airlines don’t care too much about whether your event was canceled or not.)

For huge conventions, like Dragon Con or San Diego Comic-Con, where you stay isn’t going to matter at all. They’re so large, even if a hundred people, a thousand, stayed elsewhere, it likely wouldn’t even cause a blip on the radar. But for mid-size and smaller conventions, where you decide to stay can have a direct impact on the event itself. So definitely take that into consideration when you’re deciding.

If the cost of the host hotel would absolutely break your bank and you wouldn’t be able to attend the event at all, then certainly, do whatever you need to in order to attend. But if you can afford it (or find some roomies to split the cost with), I always recommend staying onsite, both because it’s much more convenient and to show your support for the convention.

I’m going to continue this post with the assumption we’ll be staying at the host hotel, though a lot of what I’ll talk about can be applied to almost any lodging situation.

Ways to Save

Once you find out where the convention is being held, make sure to sign up for that chain’s frequent stay program before you reserve your room. You’re going to be spending the money. You may as well get some sort of credit for it. For the huge conventions, the points you earn for your stay could be very close to getting you a free night in one of the lower-cost hotels in their chain.

Many convention hotels offer an option to skip daily housekeeping in return for a few hundred points. This can add up to a couple thousand, depending on the length of your stay.

When you’re ready to reserve your room, make sure to use the link provided on the convention’s website or use their Group Code (or whatever instructions they give on their site) when calling the reservation line. If you don’t, the convention won’t get credit for your reservation toward their room block and you won’t get the negotiated room rate for the convention. Also, sometimes hotels will not even take outside reservations at all until the room block deadline. If the convention makes their deadline, the hotel reserves the entire building for the convention; if it doesn’t, then the hotel will open outside reservations.

When calling, if the main reservations line does not recognize the group code (which can happen especially with mid-size or small conventions), call the hotel directly during regular business hours and make sure to ask for “In-house Reservations.” If you just say that you need to reserve a room, you’ll often get punted into the main reservations line for the entire chain. In-house Reservations has all of the information for any group events in that specific hotel and usually will have the best information.

Sharing Space

One tried-and-true way to cut lodging expenses drastically is to share a room with others. Before deciding to do this, work out how many people you’re willing to share space with, keeping in mind that everyone will have different sleep schedules and different things they want to get out of the convention.

If you don’t have friends going to the convention, many events have a Facebook page or forum area on their website and there will almost always be a “roomshare” thread for folks who are looking for roomies. (There is often also a “rideshare” thread for people looking to cut travel expenses or just have someone to travel with.)

Make sure that once you have your roommates, you set ground rules as a group. Quiet times for the room, maybe a showering schedule (remember the 6-2-1 rule!), and whether alcohol is welcome in the room. Definitely talk about whether having people back to the room for a party or other socialness is okay. For some people it is and for some it really, really isn’t. Also, hooking up is not an uncommon thing to happen at conventions, so having a discussion about sex in the room is also a good idea. (I know, I know.)

Extra Expenses

Also keep in mind that there may be some expenses (required or elective) associated with staying at the hotel you might not have considered.

Parking – Many hotels have free parking, but many do not. If you are driving, find out how much parking will be each day. Often, the convention will negotiate a reduced parking rate, so make sure you find this out through the event, rather than on the hotel’s website. Some hotels have self-parking and valet parking, which will have different costs, so make sure you know what the charge is for, exactly. (Sometimes the In-house Reservations department will also have this info, but rely more strongly on the convention producers, since they know what they’ve negotiated.)

If the cost is too high, see whether there is a parking garage somewhere nearby that has lower rates. You can always drop your stuff off at the hotel, then go park. Another option is parking at a public transit parking lot and taking a bus or train back to the hotel (or Uber/Lyft/taxi too). If hotel parking is $30/day, a $10 Uber ride to and from your car left in a public transit lot will save you some nice bank. But definitely crunch the numbers. Too many trips to and from the car will negate any savings.

Also, there are many parking services which have apps or websites that allow you to reserve or pre-pay for a space. If you know you’d rather park off-site, definitely do a Google search on self-parking in that city.

Club Level – Some hotels have a special “Club” floor. This contains a lounge that is often open 24/7 and stocked with drinks and snacks. Sometimes there is a cocktail hour or a free breakfast. This will sometimes require you to be on that floor (and includes an upcharge, of course), but some hotels, as part of the convention negotiations, will allow anyone to purchase the upgrade and get access to the floor and the lounge. This can save you some money on food and drinks. Obviously, don’t take half a case of water bottles from the lounge to your room, but you can definitely offset food costs by having at least one light meal in the lounge per day.

Tips – This is important. Don’t be a jerk. Tip your service people.

Bellhops/Porters – These are the women and men who help you with your luggage. And don’t underestimate their pull in the hotel. Tip them well and they will help you with whatever they can, which can include getting a room with a different bed choice (say, double rather than king), connected rooms, or a room on a different floor. Last year, my friend, who was driving a pick up truck, was concerned whether she would be able to navigate the narrow parking garage. Our bellman, whom we’d tipped well, took her keys, parked her truck, and told her exactly where in the parking garage it was located. So basically, he gave her valet parking without the valet parking charge. Tip your bellpeople.

General rule of thumb – $1-$2 per bag; add $5 or $10 if you’ve got a lot of stuff.

Housekeeping – Lots of people don’t know that you should tip housekeepers. But you should. Conventions can be tricky though, because sometimes (often, really), I prefer not having housekeeping coming through my room. If I’m there 4 nights, I will often get housekeeping on the second or third day only. So I will tip based on the number of days I request housekeeping and then I add a couple dollars because I’m at a con. We always want the hotel staff to like us, so that we can keep coming back.

General rule of thumb – $2-3 per person per night (a couple bucks more if it’s a really high-end hotel); don’t forget to leave a note saying that the money is a tip for the housekeeping staff.

One last tip before I close things out for this round of Con Season on a Budget:

Bookmark Cardbear.com and PayPal Digital Gifts on eBay. Cardbear monitors gift card resale sites for the best discounts and PayPal Digital Gifts sells all different sorts of gift cards, sometimes at a discount. You want to watch for their sales, especially for their travel section.

I’ve gotten Southwest Airline gift cards for 10% off, which is a $20 savings on a $200 ticket. They also have gift cards, as of this writing, for Delta, United, American, Hotel.com, AirBnB, and Princess Cruise Lines, among other vendors. Remember to watch their store for sales. Or, better yet, sign up for their newsletter!

I love saving money on travel (because it allows me to spend money on other things! 🙂 ). What are your travel hacks?

When you go to conventions, do you stay in the host hotel or do you stay offsite?

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