Experient Championships Hotel Reservations

[MooreteP]

Ummm,
We are smart people.
You need to find a work-around.
Experient is a business with limited resources to make a profit.

Check hotels in the area outside of downtown.
Koko Ed has great advice. Stay at the airport, ride the metro. Or, stay somewhere on the outskirts, and use your bus.

[RoboTigers1796]

Originally Posted by MooreteP

Ummm,
We are smart people.
You need to find a work-around.
Experient is a business with limited resources to make a profit.

Check hotels in the area outside of downtown.
Koko Ed has great advice. Stay at the airport, ride the metro. Or, stay somewhere on the outskirts, and use your bus.

I agree you can save a lot of money staying by the airport and is an option for some teams. Then there are teams like ours who are just not allowed to. Trust me, going through all this trouble, We would if we were allowed to...

Isn't it kind of a cop out to say they have limited resources and they're just a business. Maybe they shouldn't have agreed to take on the task of managing such a large organizations lodging system if they couldn't handle it. Didn't seem to be such a problem every year prior when Steele managed it. Then again their fatal mistake from the beginning was allowing any team to reserve any amount of rooms since January (whether it was FIRSTs idea or Experients they're in it together.)

[MooreteP]

Originally Posted by RoboTigers1796

I agree you can save a lot of money staying by the airport and is an option for some teams. Then there are teams like ours who are just not allowed to. Trust me, going through all this trouble, We would if we were allowed to...

Isn't it kind of a cop out to say they have limited resources and they're just a business. Maybe they shouldn't have agreed to take on the task of managing such a large organizations lodging system if they couldn't handle it. Didn't seem to be such a problem every year prior when Steele managed it. Then again their fatal mistake from the beginning was allowing any team to reserve any amount of rooms since January (whether it was FIRSTs idea or Experients they're in it together.)

Complaints about Steele

I don't mean to provide evidence that its a "cop out". I was just suggesting that when you are a company aggregating hotel or airline data in this "modern" day of internet vetting, you are a business trying to make a profit out of the ether. Not an easy job, and there will be people who are unsatisfied with the process.

Supply and demand. Hope you don't qualify in week 7.

Fortunately, your team won the New York City competition last week, so you know that you're eligible.
Now the mentors have to find the time off from work, and you have to:
Find a decent airfare or commission a bus;
Raise additional funds from your generous sponsors;
Deal with a diminishing supply of accommodations with the increased scale of the CMP. oh my!

Not an easy task, but something the RoboTigers have pulled off 2 out of the last 3 years.

Maybe the GDC could use this as the basis for next years game.
And you thought a warehouse was boring.

[AdamHeard]

Why not just cut steele and experiant out entirely for champs?

[Bgreen1591]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

Why not just cut steele and experiant out entirely for champs?

I think you are on to something...

[RoboTigers1796]

Originally Posted by MooreteP

Complaints about Steele

I don't mean to provide evidence that its a "cop out". I was just suggesting that when you are a company aggregating hotel or airline data in this "modern" day of internet vetting, you are a business trying to make a profit out of the ether. Not an easy job, and there will be people who are unsatisfied with the process.

Supply and demand. Hope you don't qualify in week 7.

Fortunately, your team won the New York City competition last week, so you know that you're eligible.
Now the mentors have to find the time off from work, and you have to:
Find a decent airfare or commission a bus;
Raise additional funds from your generous sponsors;
Deal with a diminishing supply of accommodations with the increased scale of the CMP. oh my!

Not an easy task, but something the RoboTigers have pulled off 2 out of the last 3 years.

Maybe the GDC could use this as the basis for next years game.
And you thought a warehouse was boring.

Oh I agree completely, Steele almost didn't allow us to go to champs in 2012 and then AGAIN in 2013 because they refused to accept our only form of payment that we are allowed to issue for weeks (purchase order). Neither company are perfect so maybe its just frustrating we went from something bad to seemingly worse.

And yes, i most definitely feel bad for teams qualifying week 7. I wouldn't want to be in this situation then. It's sad to think some students may not be able to experience championships after their hard work of qualifying for silly things like this.
By the way, best of luck at your event this coming weekend!

[mwilbur]

For those of you having difficulty getting hotel reservations through Experient, I would suggest that you watch the site closely for the next few days. Individual names are supposed to be assigned to all hotel rooms no later than tomorrow, Monday, March 23. If they are not, Experient says that the rooms will be automatically released. This is likely to hurt some teams that made reservations early, but are caught napping on this requirement. It will, however, benefit those of you who are looking hard for rooms right now. Also, I know that our team will be giving up at least a few rooms at the Doubletree Hotel at Union Station. There are bound to be other teams that are releasing rooms intentionally.

Having said all of that, the old system with Steele was awful. They contracted with a hotel last year that double-booked our rooms, then announced that they wouldn't honor the reservations for our team and two others the day before we were scheduled to arrive. The new system with Experient is just as bad, but in a different way. Hopefully, the hotels at least won't double-book our rooms...

[Bgreen1591]

Originally Posted by mwilbur

For those of you having difficulty getting hotel reservations through Experient, I would suggest that you watch the site closely for the next few days. Individual names are supposed to be assigned to all hotel rooms no later than tomorrow, Monday, March 23. If they are not, Experient says that the rooms will be automatically released. This is likely to hurt some teams that made reservations early, but are caught napping on this requirement. It will, however, benefit those of you who are looking hard for rooms right now. Also, I know that our team will be giving up at least a few rooms at the Doubletree Hotel at Union Station. There are bound to be other teams that are releasing rooms intentionally.

Having said all of that, the old system with Steele was awful. They contracted with a hotel last year that double-booked our rooms, then announced that they wouldn't honor the reservations for our team and two others the day before we were scheduled to arrive. The new system with Experient is just as bad, but in a different way. Hopefully, the hotels at least won't double-book our rooms...

Thank you for that insight...We will definitively be looking out...

[nixiebunny]

We just had to spend the Arizona regional at a hotel an hour away from the event, because the fine reservations we had weren't honored. Another 45 minutes of driving and we would have been snug in our warm beds at home!