I did get one of those rooms through EA @ Georgia Tech. From my personal perspective, the block booking was convenient from a logistics perspective. It also probably had secondary effects for community building, as all of us staying in the same hotel helped us organize meetups / coworking time in the hotel.
From a cost perspective for the conference, my guess would be that it would be more cost effective to book a block rather than reimbursing individuals who book separately. Source: I had to do a bunch of block bookings for a past job, and it was significantly more cost effective. Interesting note is that in many hotels, single rooms and double rooms have the same nightly cost, so if many attendees had roommates then there is a potential for significant (40-50%) cost savings on hotel bookings.
I like the reasons laid out here for why group rentals would be good/impactful, and anecdotally I’ve seen some of these dynamics play out.
Fwiw, I believe the EAGxBoston team did book a large block of rooms for attendees, which they offered/organized through EA group organizers.
Thanks Kevin! Curious as to whether that worked out well for EAGx Boston.
I did get one of those rooms through EA @ Georgia Tech. From my personal perspective, the block booking was convenient from a logistics perspective. It also probably had secondary effects for community building, as all of us staying in the same hotel helped us organize meetups / coworking time in the hotel.
From a cost perspective for the conference, my guess would be that it would be more cost effective to book a block rather than reimbursing individuals who book separately. Source: I had to do a bunch of block bookings for a past job, and it was significantly more cost effective. Interesting note is that in many hotels, single rooms and double rooms have the same nightly cost, so if many attendees had roommates then there is a potential for significant (40-50%) cost savings on hotel bookings.
Awesome, thanks for sharing this experience!