Re: [opensuse-conference] Re: Accomodation for openSUSE Conference

On Monday 23 April 2012 10:23:57 Alan Clark wrote:

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On 4/23/2012 at 01:35 AM, Michal Hrusecky wrote: Michal Hrusecky - 11:52 18.04.12 wrote: Hi,

another thing I came across is Hotel Krystal: http://www.prague-hotel-krystal.cz/rooms/ their webpage says that they can accommodate 250 people in 374 rooms O.o, which either way I guess should be sufficient for us as some people will want to stay closer to the city center. Prices 850-950 CZK ~ 34.5-38.5 EUR for single room, 1200-1300 CZK ~ 48.5-52.5 EUR for double.

Advantages: * we can hopefully get quite some people in * on the way from the airport * natural park nearby

Neutral: * still walking distance (although quite long 3.7 km ~ 45 minutes) from

probable venue

** if we will have party near the venue, I think this is advantage * easy transportation to the venue by public transport ** direct bus line (the one from airport), direct tram lines ** 15 minutes by public transport, something goes every few minutes

http://idos.dpp.cz/idos/ConnRes.aspx?date=18.4.2012&time=9%3a00&from=119 0|1|3 3|0&to=262|1|33| 0&isdep=0&sp=0&alg=1&chn=7&dev=0&deval=250&mask=-116|-4 097&std=1|1&min=1| 1&max=60|60&tt=pid&iehack=0#focus

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** still might be quite crowded in the morning

Disadvantages: * you have to go to the venue before going to the city center * quite in the middle of nowhere

Generally I think we should officially recommend something that doesn't fill up fast. There are smaller hotels nearby but mostly with just few tenths of beds, so I hope that people will find these by themselves, but if we would recommend these, people will quickly complain that it's full already. Even with this hotel, we might need some backup anyway depending on how are rooms divided.

Comments are welcome, if no objections, will check exact room numbers and possible discounts tomorrow.

Ok, this one looks a little bit more promising, but not that much. I called them and they have currently 60 rooms available, another 50 reserved for the same date that might became available (will know for sure on 5th of may). All rooms are two beds, can be occupied by one or two persons. This 50 reserved rooms might be actually reserved for me due to some mixup as I sent them a mail and never got an answer, but they reserved 50 rooms for same time period. Bulk prices are 650 CZK ~ 26 EUR for one person and 1000 CZK ~ 40 EUR for two. Looks Ok to me.

Now only thing I need is to get a final answer on the venue. Hoped to meet the guy negotiating for it during weekend, but didn't happened, but met other guys from other conference organization team they promised to push him physically and met a guy from university, different faculty and started talking about their possibilities to lend us a venue.

I know it's taking too long, looks depressing and almost look like we should just drop the idea of merged conference, but I still think, that merged conference will be too much added value so even these difficulties will eventually pay of.

So my proposal is to use this hotel, looks like we can get from 60 to more than one hundred people in. That's a good start. As Theo suggested, some people might want to live closer to city center (venue is easily reachable from there by underground), so we will see how many extra rooms we will need. Do we know how many people booked hotel last year through us?

I don't believe we have that data. I don't think we gathered it from the hotel. I asked earlier but wasn't able to track it down. I think we are also unsure of the numbers since this is the first time in Prague.

In any case, I think this is not an urgent nor really BIG issue. Let's set up a wiki page with some info about hotels etc - or put it in Shayon's site immediately. But as we're close to the city center, having a few suggestions and only make 'deals' with the 2 best ones or so should suffice. let's focus on the location and getting the CfP out first :D Then open registration asap, say end of May? Hugs, Jos

AlanClark