Worldcon Hotel Booking

[kevin_standlee]

Room bookings for this year's Worldcon opened today. I actually had forgotten about this and was slightly behind the ball when I went to book my room. As Loncon 3 is shaping up to be one of the largest, if not the largest Worldcons of all time, it was important to get a room booked early.

Like most non-US Worldcons, Loncon doesn't have one or two mega hotels attached to its convention centre. Instead, there are a bunch of smaller hotels scattered around the place. And the ExCel Convention Centre is vast to begin with. There is no "main hotel" or "party hotel," because parties will not be sanctioned in hotels, being confined to the convention centre. However, there is a "closest hotel," the ALoft, which is a mere 50 meters from the east door of the ExCel. Because of the anticipated high demand on the ALoft, you can't book directly with that hotel. Instead, you have to book a room at one of the other hotels, then enter a lottery to have a chance to reserve a room at the ALoft; if you win, you can release your other booking.

By the time I remembered it was Booking Day, rooms at all of the other relatively close hotels were either full or showing prices higher than I wanted to pay, so instead I opted for the Crowne Plaza, which is an Intercontinental hotel (Holiday Inn group) with which I have my Platinum status. It unfortunately is 950 m from the end of the ExCel where Worldcon is happening, which means we won't be popping back and forth a lot. OTOH, the Docklands Light Railway runs right next to this area, and there are stops near both my hotel and the east entrance of the ExCel. It might be worthwhile to load a 7-day Zone 3 travelcard (unlimited travel in this area) onto my Oystercard for GBP24; that makes a break-even at only one or two trips a day, and the DLR runs every 8-10 minutes most of the day.

Anyway, on to the booking. To my amazement, the range of dates I wanted (arrive Wednesday, depart the following Tuesday) was already sold out, although Monday departures were still available. I went ahead and booked the five-night stay and let Loncon Housing know about it. I got a note back from the housing agency saying that they're working on getting more "shoulder" nights and that I should be able to expand my reservation later. In the meantime, I directly booked a one night stay at the same hotel through the IHG website. I don't like having end-to-end reservations like this because there's always a risk the hotel might want you to physically switch rooms, but this seems like the prudent thing to do. If the shoulder nights open up, I'll expand the original reservation and drop the one-nighter. If the shoulder nights do not free up, I'll probably go ahead and rebook that one-nighter using points, as there's no real need to spend that GBP130 when the convention doesn't get any credit for it. I have (or will have) enough points that I could almost book the entire convention stay on points, but I'd rather not deprive the Worldcon of nights toward their room commitments, having sweated out making the room block from the other side of the fence for more than one convention.

Comments

[drplokta]

Room blocks work a bit differently in the UK as well. We don't have any kind of attrition or penalties for failing to make our room block. In fact it's more helpful than not for people to book rooms outside our blocks, since that means we can fit more people in total into the on-site hotels.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Ah, I didn't know that! If I had, I would have booked the entire stay "out of block" directly from IHG. I can't do that now because (not surprisingly) overnight the remaining rooms at the Crowne Plaza have gone from same-rate-as-Loncon to GBP150/night.

[twilight2000.livejournal.com]

Bigger than LA in 84? I'd be amazed to see *that*

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

Much as I am bummed we can't go, in a way I'm glad. Big Harold gets grumpy when we can't stay near the convention center. I do want detailed reports from all my friends who are going however. Have fun.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It had never occurred to me to ask where in London the Worldcon was to be. The Docklands? Oh. Suddenly I'm more pleased I'm not spending a British vacation doing that.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Er... doing what specifically? Spending 4 days in Docklands? It's actually quite nice these days and the DLR makes it pretty handy for central London, or even black cabs if there's a group of you. Brick Lane isn't gong to be much more than 3-4 GBP each for a cab (if memory serves) a mini-cab even less.

It's not necessarily a bad base for doing a London holiday these days, 10-15 minutes to the City and minutes to London City for trips to other European cities.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

If I don't end up going on to Dublin (which is looking quite doubtful), I'll probably move to a different London hotel (one at which my IHG points stretch farther, like Camden Town) for the rest of our stay. But I did consider staying there or at the Holiday Inn Express another 500 m down the road for the entire trip, given the good transit connections through the DLR and avoiding having to change hotels.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I'd suggest looking at the Paddington area over Camden - much more central and I find it pretty good value when I'm looking for a budget stay.

Plus you can visit the rebuilt St Pancras station and Hotel which I think you'll get a huge Kick out of.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

It's more a case of where I can make my IHG (Holiday Inn) points work most effectively; also, I've stayed at the Camden Town Holiday Inn several times and therefore know my way around. You're right, however, that it's nowhere near as central.

I've been in St. P since the rebuilding, as well as KX; both very impressive, although I think the latter did a better job with the space, as St.P is wasting a bunch of space "railside" for security theatre reasons.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Well, less security theatre and more border control as the UK isn't Shengan.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

No, seriously: Christian Wolmar (who you may know is one of the preeminent UK transportation writers and also now a candidate for Mayor of London) asked why there's all that wasted space behind the barriers and was told it was needed for "security." It's not actually used for anything other than making the public concourses narrower.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

If memory serves, once you've walked to the DLR stop, waited around, walked from the one at the East End, you may as well have walked. There's also something nagging in my mind about the Prince Regent stop that I've never used it for the DLR at the ExCel and I can't remember why.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I suspect that you're right about the hotel-DLR-DLR-ExCel walk being approximately the same distance and time as just walking the 950m directly.

I wonder if a taxi ride from the hotel to the front of the ExCel is any faster? While in Glasgow, there were a couple of times we used taxis to get from our housing to the SECC front door when we were carrying lots of stuff or the one time it was raining a little.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... Given the road layouts the answer is also almost certainly no. The ExCel is bounded to the South by the Thames, so the roads run to the North, and getting to/from isn't straight forward. The Crown Plaza is at the open(ish) end of a cul-de-sac with the ExCel at the other end.

I've done a tech conference there where the conference was where the Worldcon will be and I was staying in the Novotel - it was a hike but not a particularly arduous one.

You are indoors for most of the distance....

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what I figured. I'm not allergic to walking 950m. It's just inconvenient, particularly when humping recording gear back and forth.

We were a similar distance during Glasgow and it wasn't as inconvenient; however, I cheated: as Events Division Manager, I had an office (well, actually, a storage room to which I had access) in the Clyde Auditorium and furthermore had access to the backstage dressing rooms, so I pre-staged some stuff over there, reducing the number of trips I had to make.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

It's a more benign layout than Glasgow in my opinion and will feel like there's 'more to it' than the SEC. From the point of view of the space, the ExCel is pretty good, I'm more concerned at the shear size and how we'll fill it. OTOH - from the rate rooms have been going and the numbers of people signed up, it seems this will be a huge convention.

[flick.livejournal.com]

Depending on volumes of stuff, we may be able to arrange something similar in my secure space, as you're helping me out. Any help?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Possibly. It's mainly hauling camera and tripod for recording the Business Meeting. At most it would be a medium rolling bag to put in a corner somewhere.

[flick.livejournal.com]

Oh, that would be no problem! Sure, plan to do that if it's helpful.

[lindadee.livejournal.com]

I'm booked at the Ramada for six nights. Now I need to decide how much more time I want to spend in London and then fly over to Dublin for the convention there. I'll be taking my sabbatical this year, so I'll have at least a month to spend travelling. My plan (so far) is to fly to London (or Paris, if it's cheap to do that and take the Chunnel to London), take the Ontell tour, attend the convention, and fly home from Dublin. This will probably be modified, depending on cost and time.