Reminder for those staying at the Artmore...

[nailz]

Glenn, please Have Words with the hotel. If nothing else, you could politely inform them that if they keep pulling shit like this, you'd be happy to "unrecommend" the hotel to festival attendees.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, apparently. This shouldn't fall on anyone's shoulders to bitch on behalf of patrons of the hotel other than the patrons who don't like their practice themselves. I'll assume you skimmed the tread and passed over the entire blurb about how he's got nothing to do with the hotel, nor it's management, nor it's policies. Nor should he have to on behalf of the people who go to see progpower.

 

[AngraRULES]

(adding to nailz's point)

Pellaz, real question for you to think about for a second.

What good will "unrecommending" the hotel do?

There's a chance they'll say "We'll keep it mind for next year".

There's also a chance that doing that would make ProgPower lose the "hotel room block" for the weekend of the festival. And what would that lead to? Us fighting for rooms with non festival attendees, us dealing with people who just want sleep and quiet that weekend and will complain about the courtyard partying, traffic of people in-and-out, etc.

Considering the hotel is under new management, I almost guarantee option B is the most likely. Do you think it's a risk that makes sense to be taken? I sure as hell don't.

 

[jaimek]

After the way the hotel treated us last year, I'm not entirely sure they're not doing it to *encourage* us to take our business elsewhere. Yeah, a couple of douchebags overdoing didn't help matters, and fuckups are going to happen when so many people are booking from the same group, but last year's management didn't really want anything to do with us in general, and they made it passive-aggressively clear all weekend. (namely all the signs telling us to buy our alcohol from the bar, booking a completely unrelated party in the courtyard Saturday night that a. went a couple hours over, and b. inconvenienced their paying guests, and then hovering around the courtyard all weekend with disapproving looks on their faces.) If the cost of having us there outweighs the income from what they charge us, they need to say that up front, and not stick the entire group with unjustified extra charges on top of what we already agreed to at the time the rooms were booked.

 

[Diab0lique]

Jen does rock, she has done all the research for us. She's got tons of accommodation options on Facebook, even condos or apartments... Not to mention everything else you could need from Marta schedules, maps, all the best places to eat and where to find the booze m/ Lay off the Harvester, he's got enough to do.
Love y'all!

And she does this out of the goodness of her southern bell heart. I've never heard of another fest that works so hard to accommodate its attendees.

 

[Dragongrrrl]

Cross-posted from Facebook (because I'm lazy like that):

update on the Artmore situation: I spoke to Richard (the sales manager) today, and it turns out that the extra charge was not supposed to be there. it's the hold they typically put on cards when you check in, but someone jumped the gun and just tacked it on to the room charge. they're removing the incorrect charge and adding the correct one, and I am satisfied. now I can get on with looking forward to PPUSA with NO concerns! BRING ON THE PARTY!! \m/ \m/

 

[lady_space]

What good will "unrecommending" the hotel do?

[...]
There's also a chance that doing that would make ProgPower lose the "hotel room block" for the weekend of the festival. And what would that lead to? Us fighting for rooms with non festival attendees, us dealing with people who just want sleep and quiet that weekend and will complain about the courtyard partying, traffic of people in-and-out, etc.

Considering the hotel is under new management, I almost guarantee option B is the most likely. Do you think it's a risk that makes sense to be taken? I sure as hell don't.

If they keep up their bullshit, and everyone decides to boycott them (and yes, put up with possibly being in a slightly less convenient location), then that's entirely moot. And quite frankly, if there's any action to be taken that will straighten them out, absolutely zero business from ProgPower attendees is the only thing that might work.

Aren't they under new management every fucking year anyway?

Shaye

 

[AngraRULES]

If they keep up their bullshit, and everyone decides to boycott them (and yes, put up with possibly being in a slightly less convenient location), then that's entirely moot. And quite frankly, if there's any action to be taken that will straighten them out, absolutely zero business from ProgPower attendees is the only thing that might work.

Aren't they under new management every fucking year anyway?

Shaye

ProgPower attendees NOT staying at the Artmore, when the Artmore is right there?



No, seriously now, what's your suggestion?

 

[lady_space]

Right... and therefore, everyone only has themselves to blame. The Artmore has absolutely no incentive to do anything differently.

/s

 

[nailz]

Quest complete

Awesome.

 

[General Zod]

While I'm no fan of the Artmore, the reality is, there isn't a better option. The issue is not one of merely distance, but the overall logistics of hosting this festival. If everyone wants to hang out in a centralized area until the ass crack of dawn, then we need a hotel we can have exclusivity with. So this new hotel would need to be neither too big nor too small. It would also need to be the right quality, as most people here can't afford a four star hotel, and most wouldn't want to stay in a bed bug ridden one star hotel. In addition, the hotel's management is going to have to be OK with 1,000 drunk Metal heads out on their front lawn until 6A.M. And... we need to find an establishment that doesn't have any adjacent residents or businesses who would likely be calling the cops repeatedly from the resulting noise level. This hotel should also be conveniently located to the venue, across the street from a Marta stop, and of course have an amazing staff who never screws up any of the several hundred reservations we'd like to take a year in advance.

Again, I have no love for the Artmore. But the reality is, they're all we've got.

 

[Oblivion Ocean]

Yea, my slight experience with them was enough to not make me trust them to professionally keep any reservation I made with them.

However, I think some of this comes off a little like entitled whining (I am not mentioning anyone specific or the people that were wronged by the hotel). Seems like people want a hotel that is close, reasonably priced, and will allow people to use their open spaces to be loud and drink until all hours of the night without charging some sort of fee for renting said space. Then they complain when this arrangement starts to have some limitations put on it?

Getting lodging for this event has been a breeze the 3 times I have gone regardless of my situation. When I was in grad school I was able to find something cheap and make a modest trek to the venue. The last two years I was easily able to get the Residence Inn, even with my late planning this year. Plus as someone mentioned, with Jen posting all the rental options, affordable housing is even more abundant. I know it is apples and oranges in terms of size, but try going to something like Comic Con where there is nothing affordable, small availability and absolutely no help/empathy from the organizers.

 

[DADRocks]

yeah...........kudos to both Glenn and Jen, for all the info they provide, make this festival so easy for us lazy attendees. I've been coming for years and still find new info that they post really helpful.