Westercon 75: Groundhog Day

[kevin_standlee]

Yesterday, Westercon 75 announced that the convention in Anaheim will not happen and that, consistent with the Westercon Bylaws, the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS), owner of the Westercon service mark, has directed Loscon 49 to take on the official functions of Westercon 75. The post to which I linked is what I wrote on Westercon.org (I'm the lead maintainer of the site), but it does quote and link to the official statement from Westercon 75's chair, Arlene Busby.

For those of you who follow Westercon closely, this is effectively the same thing that happened two years ago when Westercon 73 in Seattle had to throw in the sponge, and for what I take to be the same reason: not enough members to cover the cost of holding the convention. This is why the announcements from the 2021 and 2023 Westercons and the posts on Westercon.org look so much alike. We've been through this before, and unfortunately have some understanding of how to deal with it, so some of us could share the documents we used before, to help the current Westercon rather than having them have to thrash around creating announcements after they decided that they had to pull the plug.

This is similar to how the experience I had in 2011 when the Westercon site selection crashed means that the selection processes in 2021 and 2022 went considerably faster. Specifically, I know how to avoid driving the Business Meeting into a procedural corner while still letting the members have their say.

If some of you are wondering why we could hold a Westercon in Tonopah while "real places" like Seattle and Anaheim could not, I suggest the major reason is money. Tonopah was very inexpensive. If we hadn't gone a bit overboard on publications, it would have been even less expensive. And while we did not need to do so, Lisa Hayes was prepared to backstop up to $5000 of the convention's expenses in excess of revenue had it been necessary. Our convention center cost only $550/day to rent, and our Guests of Honor were paid by a grant from UFO, parent of Westercon 72. We had not planned to have GoHs and said so when we were bidding, but UFO gave us enough money that we could afford to invite and honor Myrna Donato and Kevin Andrew Murphy, and I was glad we were able to do that. Still, our fixed costs were quite low, so we could manage to hold the convention with as few members as we had (158 badges picked up, and around 350 total members including supporting).

All of us who were going to be working on the official functions of Westercon (Site Selection and Business Meeting) have agreed to work on the same functions as part of the relocated-to-Loscon Westercon 75. After discussing it with the individuals, I've done a reshuffle of position titles to better reflect what people will be actually doing. I'd like to thank Loscon 49 for being so ready to take on these additional functions, and I look forward to working with them on integrating the 75th Westercon into Loscon 49.

It seems likely to me that the long-term members of Westercon will want to consider the future of the convention, and that this will be a subject of discussion at Loscon 49/Westercon 75 this November in Los Angeles.

It's a pity that the 75th Westercon won't be a standalone event, but I'm glad that it will be in the Los Angeles area, given that it is where Westercon started.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

Hotel function space has gotten horribly expensive. NEFilk died for that reason, but fortunately because we couldn't get a hotel in the first place rather than having to cancel a con in progress.

[lindadee]

An article I read yesterday (and unfortunately I don't recall where I read it) said that hotels are charging more for space to keep down the number of people they are accommodating. I don't know if that's true or not, but I suspect even if the number of hotel guests rises, the hotels won't lower their rates any time soon.

[radar]

They're trying to recoup their losses from not having events during the pandemic, plus inflation/cost of everything has risen sharply, so it's a two-edged knife that conventions large and small are dealing with (I just finished running a convention that cost almost twice what was budgeted, for those very reasons.)

Many hotels are now also requiring the final bill to be paid before the event, rather than after, oftentimes as much as thirty days in advance, so conventions don't have the chance to balance the books with at-the-door registrations- the result is that many events don't have a "parent" organization with the backup funds or a staffer with a credit card willing to plunk down four or even five figures.

Accommodation rates vary but I have found that "con rates" in a room block have (generally) been pretty reasonable.

[madfilkentist]

A lot of hotels didn't survive the pandemic, and now that in-person events are coming back, there are more events competing for each hotel's function space.

[a_cubed]

I'm hearing from professional events as well as fan ones that hotels are trying to squeeze as much revenue as possible out of events. As lindadee notes, they are also asking for advance payment for more or even all of the function space rental.

[jeffreyab]

Tonopah also benefited from a very unique location I think.

[kevin_standlee]

I'd like to think so, but there were lots of people complaining about how difficult it was to go there, and that it wasn't in a "real" place like LA or Portland.