FIRST Event Housing Provider: no access information?

Competition Regional Competitions
1

Our team is trying to use the Experient housing system to book a block of rooms for the Palmetto Regional. It appears that the only way to do this is to follow instruction sent in an email to Primary and Alternate contacts, however we haven’t received that email. Previously FIRST sent an email to all teams concerning Experient:

2015 Event Housing Provider: Experient is proud to be the Official Housing Provider for the 2015 FIRST Robotics Competition event season. FIRST has worked diligently with hotels in each area to establish room blocks for teams that travel to Regional and District events and need affordable, convenient, and safe accommodations during their stay. If your team is traveling to a Regional or District event this season, we highly recommend reserving rooms in the official FIRST housing block. Your Main and Alternate Team Contacts will receive an email with an invitation to secure a block of rooms at participating hotels shortly. Please be sure to check your inbox for this important information.

Then they sent this in an email on Nov. 20th:

Your Team’s Main and Alternate Contacts received an email with an invitation to secure a block of rooms at participating hotels on Monday, 11/17/14. Please be sure to check your inbox for this important information.

I called FIRST hoping to get this sorted out so that the blocks don’t all disappear before we can register, but the person I spoke with wasn’t “allowed” (my words, not hers) to give any direct help. She could only refer the issue to another FIRST employee who deals with Experient. Hopefully that employee will be able to get Experient to resend the email.

So my question is, is there any other information that you guys can give us about this process? Can we really do nothing until Experient decides to send us a replacement email? I’m going to try calling Experient’s customer support as well, but I’m not sure how that will go.

2

I’m an Alternate Contact, and I have received nothing aside from those two quoted e-mails regarding housing with Experient. None were received at all on Nov. 17, so I was rather confused about that as well.

The Nov. 13 email did say “You will only receive hotel information related to the events your team is registered for – no more scrolling through pages of events!”, so maybe you’ll only get an email if your regional actually has hotels booked through them.

An Oct. 1 update from FIRST also said “the Championship hotel website will be available in December”, but I haven’t heard anything about that, either. If there was ever a booking link sent, I didn’t get it - hopefully someone else can chime in here to verify, too.

3

I believe an email will be going out before the holidays with more information about championship housing.

4

We are registered for two events.
One does not have hotels covered by FIRST.
We received an Experient email yesterday about hotels for the other event.

5

As the primary contact for my team, I have already received emails from Experient for our two district events. I have also seen a forwarded email regarding volunteer rooms. So emails are rolling out…though it would appear not all at once.

6

After calling FIRST yesterday I got the impression that we should have gotten the email regardless of if our event has hotels associated with it. Though she couldn’t confirm that for sure. I would call FIRST if I were you, just in case (800-871-8326)

Hhm, I’m guessing that Palmetto just doesn’t have hotels associated with it then. I would like to be sure of that before putting down nearly $2,000 in deposits on a hotel though.

7

FYI, I called FIRST today and was told that Experient is supposed to contact teams regarding Championships sometime this week. I’ll believe it when I see it…:wink:

8

We never received emails though both of our regionals have hotels available through this booking system. After emailing Experient they replied quickly and got us set up. However they only had one hotel available for our first regional, and only two for the second. I’m not impressed with the communication or selection.

9

Well big surprise…the week has passed and no CMP related contact from Experient as phone call with FIRST said would happen by Friday. The late timing for bookings makes me nervous.

10

We still haven’t heard or seen anything from Experient or USFIRST about World Championship reservations. While logged in through our team account there wasn’t anything available during April 22-25th… Anybody else have any luck or new information?

11

Most recent info from FIRST HQ sent out to teams on Friday…
Greetings Teams:

Live Broadcast from the Founder’s Reception at Dean’s Home Tonight: Be sure to tune in to the live broadcast from the Founder’s Reception tonight for a special announcement starting at 7:00 pm EST. The main portion of the broadcast will be about 30 minutes long and will be available here: http://www.streamingmeeting.com/webcast/2015_FIRST_Founders/.

2015 FIRST® Robotics Competition Kickoff Tomorrow, January 3, 2015: More information about Kickoff is available at http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/kickoff. The broadcast is scheduled to begin at 10:15 am EST and can be viewed here: comcastcorporation.com/frc2015

NEW! Behind the Lines: 2015 Kit of Parts, Wednesday, January 7th at 8:00 pm EST: Come join Kate Pilotte, Jonathan Bryant, and Liz Smith as they discuss the 2015 FRC Kit of Parts and AndyMark’s Drive Base Kit. These experts will review the contents in the Kit of Parts and discuss how teams can use them during the season. They will also share recommended resources and best practices. The community will have a chance to ask any questions during the last half of the episode. Don’t miss it!

For more information and to view previous episodes of Behind the Lines, please visit www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/behind-the-lines

Reminder to Update Team Profile in TIMS: Team profile information is used for program books that are distributed to visitors, VIPs and teams at events. This information will be exported from your team’s TIMS profile on Friday, January 9, 2015 12:00 pm (noon) EST. To update your team’s information, your team’s Main or Alternate Contact must:

• Login to TIMS https://my.usfirst.org/frc/tims/site.lasso;
• Under “Teams I can Administer”, click the Team Summary button for your team;
• In the Team Profile section, click on the edit/view buttons to update team information.

Just a reminder: FIRST Championship Housing and Registration Website Opening on Monday, January 5th: FIRST has partnered with Experient, an industry leader in the housing and registration market, and is excited to provide a new, easy-to-use website for Championship housing and registration. More information is available here: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/championship-travel

Go Teams!

Sincerely,

FRC Team Support

Go Teams!

Sincerely,

FRC Team Support

Big help, huh? Especially since those of us not registered for Districts have not received email from Experient helping us to even register the team with their organization, let alone the actual events we are going to. No notice of time frame Monday for sign up mentioned either…

12

Thanks Joe, I appreciate it! Let’s hope they deliver this time…

13

Not confident they will deliver in fair manner, Navid. As it now stands, people in eastern time zones more likely to get online earlier than those of us out west and there are no specifics from Experient that indicate timely equal access opportunities to register:(

14

After spending a fair amount of time in the Experient portal I have a few questions/concerns, maybe others can clarify. If not I’ll try and call them tomorrow:

  • Nearly all the hotels within a mile of the Convention Center don’t offer 2 Bed Rooms, which I know has been offered in previous years. Are 2 Bed Rooms just not available through Experient?
  • The rates for 1 Bed vs 2 Bed rooms are the same at locations that offer both. Can we see the price differences somewhere?
15

Update:

  • Pretty much every hotel within a 1.5 mile radius are apparently out of 2 Bed rooms…
  • The rates are apparently the same no matter the bed count, because that makes sense…

Regardless of bed count, this leaves only 3 options available to select in the portal within a mile, even though more are available on the map:

  • Omni Majestic, $153, (.6 mi)
  • Hyatt Regency St. Louis at The Arch, $159, (.7 mi)
  • Hilton at the Ballpark, $153 (.8 mi)

Guess, we’ll put these 3 down for now. I have a hard time believing this is correct. Anybody else able to weigh in?

16

We tried booking at the 2 hotels where FTC is held this year at Union Station. You’d think they’d be reserved just for FTC teams since the vast majority of them won’t even know if they qualify until after super regionals in March. We’re an international team and know we’ve qualified but even then we struck the situation where only 1 bed rooms were all that was left.

How do FRC teams even know they’ve qualified for the championship? I know a rather high % of them advance and some will be pretty confident but even so having 600 of them in St Louis is putting the squeeze on accomodation.

Any FRC teams care to chime in if they’ve booked 2 bed rooms at the Union Station hotels? Interested to know how fair the Experient “request” system is actually working…

17

Contrary to what I initially thought, it appears to be first-come-first-served, just like the old system. We looked at the hotel list on the first day to see how it was going to work this year, and when we looked at it again one day later many of the hotels had disappeared (e.g., many of the ones close to the dome). I can only assume that this is because they were booked up by teams. 2-bed rooms were definitely being offered at various hotels near the venues, so if you’re not seeing any then it’s likely because they have been booked.

18

I actually think this system is worse than Steele Mtg…at least with them you could set up an account before the selection day arrived.

We got in to system in microseconds of system opening time on day one but had to start from scratch and set up an account before we could actually select possible hotels and prioritize our selections. Within a couple hours we got a confirmation email that we got our **6th **choice:( Did teams that previously registered for District housing have to start from scratch like the rest of us non-District teams? Good thing we booked a reasonable alternative last April.

So, once again we came nowhere close to getting into one of our top 3 choices. Kudos to those who did… If Moe got into the Drury CC again I am going to call the FBI…(just kidding :D)

19

Well, at least this I can take blame for.

Even without having personally booked with Steele, I’m willing to put money behind your statement. The new system is dysfunctional.

20

MOE had the same issues. We were told that morning that everybody had to re-register for Champs, even if you had previously registered.

And you can cancel the call to the FBI; MOE got the Hampton Inn Gateway Arch (is that your “reasonable alternative”?). Drury was booked by the time we got through.