Championship info from FIRST

[Andy Baker]

Originally posted by D.J. Fluck
FIRST better have this released soon, or else...

Relax. We all still have plenty of time for this. Airfares usually go up 30 days before flights. The Championships are still 5 months away. Every year, we do not buy our airline tickets until mid-January, and we still get decent deals.

Think about this:

FIRST is obviously still working on our Championships "package" (which includes hotel, entertainment, food, ground transportation, etc.) and have not finalized a deal for all of the details quite yet. Of course, they know the location and date.... but if they tell us now, before they have this "package" done, then things will go haywire.

If they told us now that the Champioships are in Timbuktu on Date XXX, then teams will start booking their own flights and hotel packages for this location and time... sending the demand up for those items. At the same time this demand would be going up, FIRST is still negotiating this "package". So, of course, they just cannot tell us yet. Once they get the details of this "package" finalized, then they will tell us.

We can definitely wait and see what this "package" is and not book our own plans. The fact that teams have not done this yet gives a considerable edge to FIRST while they negotiate low prices for us. They couldn't do this very well in the past, since we knew that the location was WDW and many teams booked their own plans.

This is a simple lesson in supply and demand.

Andy B.