Experient Championships Hotel Reservations

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by RoboTigers1796

The question that is bugging me, who the heck has all these downtown rooms reserved? But more importantly, how is this system any better than what it was?

Its a bad system in general but every year hotels downtown are booked almost immediately. Remember there are jrFLL, FLL, FTC, and volunteers for the event/venues who also need rooms in addition to teams and most of them know before FRC teams if they are going. Our team qualified during Week 1 in 2011 and the downtown options there were very pricey since everything else had been picked through.

With the expanding Championship I'm sure more teams jumped on blocking off rooms if they had a good feeling they would continue with qualifying year after year. I know some teams in districts plan their travel well in advance with blocking off hotels and charter buses with the intent that if they don't qualify they can pass it off to another team at the event (and DCMPs are in week 7 so if you think the options are limited it just keeps getting worse). Waiting until you are physically registered for the Championships in some cases is suicidal because you do run the risk of not being able to attend because travel just isn't available.

I doubt FIRST would have blindly expanded the Championship without looking at the numbers of how many hotel rooms were in the St. Louis area but the circle of hotels must have gotten bigger. Even 20-30 minutes outside the city you'll have completely booked hotels with FIRST teams.