I had a thought today. (Folks who know me will be familiar with my occasional crazy ideas…)
The Preamble
I’ve been thinking about convention membership prices for a while, pretty much every time I need to pay one, or hear about someone struggling to pay one.
It’s been a while since I’ve been on the organising end of a convention, but I know they are expensive things to run. Hotel venues are usually in the vicinity of exorbitant, and I’d assume that the bulk of the membership fees go to covering this expense. And it isn’t a discretionary line-item, in that the con needs a venue.
I also know that in general cons don’t aim to run at a significant profit/surplus; while they may be able to put aside a few bucks at the end to pass on to the next con, this is often achieved through sponsorships or more people than expected attending.
So back to my idea. Right now we have possibly (on paper) the healthiest convention calendar Australia has seen for at least 22 years (which is as long as I’ve been attending). We have three guaranteed annual conventions: Swancon (Perth), Conflux (Canberra), and Continuum (Melbourne); as well as occasional natcons in other cities (and in recent times the 2-yearly NSW Writers Centre SF Festival, a slightly different beast, I’m also excluding the Sydney FreeCons from this as, I understand, there is no membership fee required to attend).
All of these makes for a lot of expensive travel in order to attend as many as possible. A conservative $1000-2000 ($700 airfare, $1000 hotel + food, $300 membership) in rough figures to attend a con not in your home state. These are rough figures, and while savings may be able to be made through room sharing, it’s still a sizeable chunk o’ filthy lucre. Possibly enough to discourage interstate attendance.
At the same time, I really believe that the best and strongest conventions come from having as many attendees from all over Australia. I think this helps out with programming, and the overall vibe of the show. I think that whatever can bring as many people together to these events is best for the community.
The idea
So, as the idea goes, would a convention gain from offering an interstate discounted membership; say $100 at the door?
It’s just an idea, I don’t know how it would work in practice. I’d start by looking to exclude NatCons from this suggestion, as I think the nature of those events encourage interstate participation and attendance. So I’m only looking at non-NatCons. So would like to throw some questions out there for discussion.
The questions
1. Would such a discounted membership encourage interstate visitors to attend?
2. What is the rough current proportion of local to interstate attendees: would such a discount be taking money out of the convention?
3. Would there be local resistance to “foreigners” getting a cheaper rate?
4. Are there other/more effective ways to promote and encourage interstate attendees?
Your thoughts?
As a con runner, in general i would say that any way of getting more bums on seats and bringing more money through the door is a good thing – the question is, would this approach achieve a net los or gain? I’m unsure, I think more calculations would need to be done. If you end up with a net loss then it’s not a good idea.
As a con attendee anything that makes it cheaper is a help. That said, by far the travel and accomodation costs have been the killers for me lately, not the attendance price. And the mind boggles about the hotel rates – I can’t help but think that con organisers could barter harder for better hotel rates – they are bringing guests into the hotel, not to mention the thousands of dollars the con has already fronted for the use of the venue.
One last thing on rates though. As a parent, with now an unpredictable schedule, it is more difficult than ever to plan ahead with certainty, and the lack of child friendly facilities at cons is a big issue (and I think cons would get more people coming back and attending if this issue were suitably addressed.) But, presuming no child facilities, I then either have to take the risk of paying for a full con up front in order to get the best rate, but then losing money if my child gets sick or I have a babysitter cancel on me (which happens far too often), or I have to wait until the weekend of the con to assess how the home life is going and then pay an exorbitant day rate. The day rates should be reduced so that their total sum either equals or is only negligibly higher than the full con rate, to make it possible for more people to attend for one day only. And it’s not only parents who may only be able to attend on one day. Oh, and at a con I was looking at going to last year, they had no day rates at all for concession cards holders which meant that it was by far cheaper for me to pay for the full con, even though I was lucky if I was able to make it to a day and a half’s worth of programming.
In summary I would say that addressing the issues of childcare/children’s programming and day rates would have a bigger impact on con attendance that the proposal you make above. Just my thoughts.
PS. Here is another thought. At Worldcon their solution to babysitting was to get parents to talk to each other and babysit in their hotel rooms. Um, totally flawed. How about, the con provides a venue, and parents sign up to the roster to share the care of the children, but also get a reduced rate for attendance, given that they will be unable to attend the whole convention unless childcare is provided by the con?
Hotel room costs are the big expense for me. Where conference organisers can negotiate a big discount for attendees, it really helps. I’m happy to pay $160/$180 per night. Anything over that and it’s really too much. Not everyone likes sharing, and it’s so much fun having everyone staying at the same hotel. So I’d encourage organisers to focus on that instead.
By far the biggest part of my decision to attend an interstate convention is airfare and accommodation. The price at the door would not significantly impact by decision to attend or not to attend unless the price was over $250.
The biggest obstacle to west coast/east coast fan exchange is (by far) the price of airfare from coast to coast, and the price of accommodation once you get there (particularly if you want to stay at the con venue) and that’s not likely to significantly improve any time soon.
The biggest obstacle to exchange between the east coast states is the quality of the product. Continuum’s fine, but it’s not (on average) as good as Swancon. The last two times I went to Conflux it was deeply focused on publishers and aspiring writers and I haven’t felt motivated to go back despite it being in walking distance of my house. Basically entry to east coast conventions could be free and I’d still feel like I was taking a gamble in attending.
The best thing Australian conventions can do to encourage fan exchange is to improve their communication, standardise their quality, and broaden their appeal. Get better at creating, identifying, and promoting their “core” content. Get better at grouping, standardising, and promoting their various wings of “niche” content.
Cons are terrible at this; they promote the hell out of their guests, but you talk to anyone who goes and they’ll tell you “it’s not about the guests”. What is it about? The other attendees, right? How do you promote that? How do you get new people past the clique-oriented nature of cons? Either you open the cliques (say, by putting long-time con-goers and their bios on your promotional materials to make them, effectively, everyon’s friend), or you encourage new cliques coming through by offering group discounts, by inviting entire small clubs and societies to come on special plans, by a “bring a buddy” discount.
You need more introductory spaces – open lounges with constant group activities; convention metagames such as badge trading or scavenger hunts that give new attendees something to do and provide them with legitimate and mediated reasons to interact with strangers; big “What’s on Now” screens that go beyond regurgitating the schedule and talk about why people should actually attend events.
And so forth. I realise there’s only so professional you can get when you have amateur volunteer organising committees with large churn year-to-year, but this is what cons should be aspiring to.
I’d just like to add that the aim of the discussion is to focus on Interstate attendees at conventions, how to promote this, how to improve this, if it is something that should be improved.
I’m not encouraging this discussion to diverge into a general “how to get more people to come to cons”. There’s always a time and place for this kind of discussion but that isn’t here and now.
Sorry – it’s clear now the question is “How do we help the few dozen people who already want to go to interstate conventions but don’t due to financial reasons?” I read it as, “Are finances the reason we only have a few dozen people who want to come to interstate conventions but don’t?”
And yes, accommodation is a bigger issue than con fees. Sure, $100 saved is $100 saved regardless of whether you knock it off the con entry or the hotel room, but it’s a psychological difference. People who’ve been to a good convention before know the value of the convention; they’re prepared to pay the ticket price because they know that pretty much every dollar goes back into the quality of next year’s con. But who wants to make a hotel richer? Nobody. It’s money you begrudge; it’s money that influences decisions.
… and possibly part of the SOLUTION to accommodation prices is (returning to my original post) by encouraging groups. Accommodation gets cheaper the more people you share it with; get enough and you can rent an apartment. Sharing accommodation is only viable if you know other interstate travellers, which again comes back to either better linking the existing community, or encouraging people to bring their own groups. Helping zealots and early adopters evangelize the convention to their friends makes it cheaper and easier for them to come, makes it cheaper and easier for their friends to come, and grows the convention as a whole.
Discounted rates for interstate attendees would kill the income for irregular cons in states with small/dispersed local communities, while not hitting the major costs for non-locals (airfare, child-care, accommodation).
(Last-minute/walk up for such a con may dig it out of a hole, but a prudent concom will have cancelled a convention that doesn’t cover costs from early attending memberships (say before the second price rise); steep membership increases are one (possibly not very good) mechanism for “encouraging” early commitment.)
There are risk/discount rate/options/futures calculations that can be done, for attendees and for concom, but the margin here is too small to contain them.
Something I often see with scientific conferences is that a convention hotel is booked, but they make sure it is close to other, cheaper hotels. Hotels with the facilities to host conferences are almost always expensive. I know people like to stay in the conference hotel, but if there is a cheaper alternative right across the road, that can make it much easier for people to fit it into their budgets.
Most of the cons I’ve been to have very cheap introductory rates, around the $100 mark. Conflux 9, which was also a Natcon had a rate of $140 from memory. This doesn’t seem to encourage people to sign up whether interstate or not. I think that’s because it’s the accommodation and travel that is the big expense. As well as people having to save for the con rego fee.
Conflux also offered upgradable supporting memberships so that is you couldn’t fork out the $140 early bird you could pay $30 and upgrade even at the door. That’s a pretty good deal and I think that us the best a con can do without upsetting other members by offering discounts.
I’m not against the idea but don’t see why early bird doesn’t cut it.
My decision about whether or not to attend a con always comes down to airfare and accomodation. I budget for those, for interstate cons (such as Swancon) to be $1000-$1500 and if I can’t get it into budget, I don’t go. I’ve been lucky to have reasonable disposable income, but even so, going as a couple blows costs out because the airfare is almost always half the expense of attending.
Cheaper accomodation options would be more likely to influence my decision to attend an interstate con.
Like Alison, my biggest issue is children. I desperately wanted to go to Conflux but there were so many variables out of my control that I gave up on it. I’m also in a low-income family so forking out even for the discounted early bird rate was too risky. However I already have my Genrecon tickets as it is local this year so I took advantage of the early bird.
Alison’s ideas are sound I think, for those of us who are primary carers of children interstate cons are a risky investment (even if we want to be there with all our heart and souls!) if care arrangements fall through or aren’t available to begin with.
Thanks Stacey (et al.)
Yes, child responsibilities are a bit factor in deciding to go to cons, but interstate cons especially.
I had planned to go to Conflux but the main issues were around childcare considerations and hotel costs. My options were to either take the gamble at trying to leave the children at home in Melbourne, but then possibly being called back at short notice (thus blowing lot sof money) because they were sick or not coping. Or…
I contacted a couple of friends within the Canberra region (who have children) about possibly staying for a few days, but this was not feasible (and of course the airfare blows out proportionally, but it is also possible to use Frequent flyer points to offset that.)
When it came to the crunch, knowing that i was left with no choice but to pay for at con accomodation, and then probably miss out on large chunks of the program because there were no at con childcare facilities, decided me.
In short;
1.
If there were a better room rate for attendees then it would be more affordable -the cons take out block bookings, so the hotels know they have a guaranteed return (but there seems to be a disparity between professional conferences and SF cons with how hotels view them), and it really is just insulting when you can go to the hotel’s own website and find really great deals – BETTER than what is being offered by booking through the con. (I did this for Convergence 2, and know many other people who have done similar.)
2. If there was reliable childcare/children’s programming available (depending upon the age) then it would be less of a gamble to go. I don’t want to fork out for airfare, accomodation and the con fee, to end up seeing only 3 hours of programming out of a 3 day weekend. It might be OK to take a risk on this for a local con (and at worse only ending up out of pocket $150 or so), but not for an interstate con.
Cheers
Alison.
Barbara, following on from your statement, I used to work at a convention management firm that dealt mainly with medical and legal conferences. there were always several hotels taken out with block bookings and attendees would send back their hotel booking confirmation (and money) along with their conference details. I don’t think the hotel rooms were drastically reduced, in spite of the block booking, it was more sold on the idea of convenience at having the convention organise it all on their behalf, and I guess the assumption was that lawyers and doctors and most other professionals can afford to pay standard hotel rates.
Of course, most SF con attendees cannot afford to pay standard hotel rates, but the challenge is, how to we get the hotels to cut a *decent* deal? After all, they want their slice of the pie don’t they?
(As an aside, I do know of at least one con I worked on where we took out block bookings at another cheaper nearby hotel, and we also provided info in theprogres reports about nearby backpackers.)
Cheers
Alison.
Perhaps the purchase of a supporting membership could guarantee an upgrade to the discounted full membership at any time, or even just the pre-door price for people who can’t confirm their availability too far ahead of time.