I don't think it is. I think that you can negotiate and I will point out that the hotel here has wanted our business enough that they have now scrambled to make life significantly better. You can also bet I'll be demanding that they credit my $54 that I put on the in-room access be credited to my bill even though ARIN would pay it. I routinely do this when the conference network (or the in-room network) sucks and it's provided by the hotel. I have yet to have one refuse my refund request. Owen On Oct 10, 2011, at 3:41 PM, Frank Bulk wrote:
Holding the last 10% of the meeting room payment seems like a good start for any venue.
But as others have indicated, the market may be too small for free-market principles to be fully effective.
Frank
-----Original Message----- From: JC Dill [mailto:jcdill.lists@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 1:36 PM Cc: North American Network Operators' Group Subject: Re: meeting network
On 10/10/11 7:00 AM, Owen DeLong wrote:
It would be wise for NANOG to approach future venues and specifically discuss these things with the hotel IT departments in question ahead of time so that they have some remote chance of being prepared.
I tried this approach many years ago, for a Blogher conference. The hotel's IT people were uncooperative, and incompetent, and they lied both about their network design and their equipment capabilities. I have since learned that this is par for the course. IMHO the only way to solve this problem is with big $$$ penalties in the contract, big enough that the incompetent IT people realize their jobs are on the line and relinquish control so experts can get access and set-up things properly.
Also note - the conference or hotel's IT people will always claim they have "done this before with no problems" even when they haven't.
jc