| Finally, I have gotten around to sending this out. First let me cover 2008 before heading into 2009. MarsCon 2008 was a success. Our attendance was around 650. Our guests Jennie Breeden, Robert Buentter and Peter Schweighofer had a great time and had nothing but good things to say about us. Katherine Kurtz and her husband Scott MacMillian have said they will be returning next year and in her blog was shouting the praises of our con suite. Peter Schweighofer also wants to return. We are in the midst of seeing if that can happen. So overall MarsCon went well -- until you talk finances. For the first time in many years, MarsCon lost money. Now that is not a major problem, although MarsCon has never tried to make money, we have built up a buffer zone in case something like this happened. But it does affect everyone because we will have to raise rates by $5.00 in 2009. This will allow us to keep MarsCon at it's high standards and continue to improve as much as possible. Now to MarsCon 2009. It will be held January 16-18, 2009 once again at the Holiday Inn Patriot. I can hear some of you screaming! Not that Hotel again! Yes, we are still at the Patriot. But let me explain. After the con, we looked at another hotel. We looked at the Williamsburg Marriott. Let me give you the positives of this hotel. More parking, 40,000 square feet of function space (although we would not have all of it), 298 sleeping rooms and several restaurants inside the hotel. Sounds great doesn't it? Now let me give you the downside and why the committee decided not to move. Hotels normally base what they charge you on how many rooms or room nights you book. For example, the Patriot has 160 rooms. You fans normally book 150 rooms on both Friday and Saturday so that equals out to approximately 300 room nights. For this, we get the function space for free. I'm talking about the ballrooms not the sleeping rooms we convert to use for programming. We added those rooms this year and that was part of why we lost money because the con picked those rooms up to use for programming. At the Marriott, if we had gotten our normal room usage of 300 room nights we would still have had to pay $4000.00. Also in order to keep our con suite at the level we have now, we would have to rent a suite that ran $400.00 dollars a day. That equates to another $1200.00 to $1600.00 dollars on top of the $4000.00. See the bills adding up. Now I haven't gotten into how much it would cost YOU the fans. The room rate was $89.00, which is a good rate for the Marriott but you could stay 3 nights at the Patriot for what it would cost you to stay 2 nights at the Marriott. MarsCon would have to charge $40.00 min. at the door in an effort to cover our costs and the con suite might drop in quality to keep the budget down. Of course, there was another path we could have taken. We could have turned MarsCon into a super con and tried to increase the attendees. More attendees, more money. But in the eyes of the committee, that was a gamble. One that if we lost could kill MarsCon. Something about Ice Storms and Snow Storms. They seem to hit us every year. We didn't want to gamble. It would also take away from the feel of MarsCon. We began as a little Relax-a-con, The Little Con That Could. In our survey almost 85 percent of the people who responded said they came to visit with their friends. MarsCon is a family reunion type of con. Finally, the last thing that kept us at the Patriot was that they wanted us! Yes the Marriott did want us also, don't get me wrong there. But there is something about the owner attending your con. Pulling you aside throughout the con and asking if everything is going good. Telling you about all the improvements and talking all year long about the con with others. There is something about the front desk coming out and getting their pictures taken with the attendees in costume. How many hotel owners will sit and watch the dancers on Friday Night and bring his wife in to see Coyote Run on Saturday night. It also a positive when we use all the space in the hotel. If there is still space available, the hotel will sell it. I could just see us booked in with a Church group. Instant problems. Now ask yourself these questions. If they have another group in house that group would take up some of the sleeping rooms? Take up some of the parking? Do you think the hotel would be stricter on their cutoff date? How many of you got your room after the cutoff date? Who would win in a battle between a regular hotel guest and a party being run next door to them? Who would you rather deal with ... an owner who is on site or some corporation that you have never met? Who would win in a battle with a corporation? And the questions go on and on. So I hope everyone understand what the committee looks at every time we try to decide on hotels. Yes! The Patriot has it problems. But we know what these problems are and we can deal with them. Every year we solve a few more problems. It is slowly getting better but it is still not perfect. Moving to the Marriott would just be trading problems. Could we deal with them? It is also not perfect. Once again, we didn't want to gamble just for the sake of adding more space. Thanks for reading this. I will take any comments, suggestions for improvements, and hell I'll even take your complaints. Just send them my way. Oh and before I forget! Thanks for attending our con and keeping MarsCon alive and well. Butch |
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3-19-2008 Update |