Why Do People Have Conferences in London?
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@Breffni-Potter said:
If tickets keep getting sold and if the people still come, then for the texas office, there is no "reason" to change the model Perhaps they need a few reasons?
There might be great reasons for London that I don't know about. But just saying that there is no reason if tickets keeping getting sold isn't true. The reason is the cost of lost opportunity. What if twice or thrice as many tickets would be sold if it was not in London? London might be costing them (or anyone doing it there) a fortune.
In the Austin model, they get people from all over the world. It is a "destination" event. Lots of people come from the UK and Europe to attend the US event. In fact, I think that it is cheaper for Europe to go to Austin than to go to London, or about equal. But the Austin event is longer, larger and better for networking.
That's why I'm surprised. Why make the UK event focused on the locals only and prohibitive to everyone else? Why not make the UK / EU event a "destination" that people from all over want to attend? If it wasn't so expensive, NTG would send tons of people to two events a year, for example. Lots of vendors attend Austin but not London or send a fraction of the representation. @nic isn't getting to go to London, but goes to Austin, for example.
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One place you see a difference (for us at least) is the spouse and support staff thing. My wife attends SW Austin even when we have to come in from another country (like this year, we are flying in from Panama.) But she isn't attending London even though she is in Europe during it. Same with @Minion-Queen's husband.
The feeling of how people attend London feels completely different.
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Going back to lost opportunity, do they want to attract cash-rich companies who will float the bill of travel, expenses, conference & still buy items? Whilst deterring others.
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Don't get me wrong, London is a fun town. I've worked there. I had an office on Canary Wharf. I wouldn't want conferences in NYC, Washington, LA or San Fran either. The US has plenty of very "bad" places for conferences but lots of good ones. Austin, Las Vegas, Orlando, Atlanta, Seattle, etc.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
Going back to lost opportunity, do they want to attract cash-rich companies who will float the bill of travel, expenses, conference & still buy items? Whilst deterring others.
I suppose but that seems like an odd target given how big the "others" are in Austin. And won't the big rich companies float the bill even when the cost of travel and lodging is low, not only when it is high? Maybe I am missing something, but London seems like a "filter" city - filtering how those without the heaving financial wherewithall to attend there. Since the conference profit is lower in London than other places, and since money is primarily earned by having more attendees, it seems odd to want to both filter out a significant part of your traditional audience while simultaneously lowering the margin on each attendee.
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If the same model was used in Austin, I would be less surprised. But the Austin conference is very inclusive rather than exclusive.
But again, this thread is not about Spiceworld, it's about why London would be a chosen destination for conferences in general. I'm genuinely interested. Is the local transport and UK / London attendee focus so strong that it is worth holding a conference that is effectively just for the locals as opposed to having one for the region?
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@scottalanmiller said:
800K. It's the fourth largest just in Texas. It's definitely a smallish city.
It's big by European standards. Only Birmingham and London are bigger in the UK. Are a disproportionate number of conferences held in London? I wouldn't know as I hate conferences and try and avoid them as much as possible. But a quick Google comes up with conferences all over Europe - I'm not seeing a massive focus on London.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@Minion-Queen said:
Ok figuring out my costs and it really is crazy expensive just to get from the airport to my hotel alone is going to cost almost $100!!
Where are you flying into? The airport express train to Gatwick and Heathrow is about $30 one-way or $50 return, I think.
I usually just take a cab when I lad somewhere to get to my hotel (except in NYC as it is actually easier to take the train). So that is the route I started looking at. That is crazy expensive. But luckily someone else will be waiting at the airport and help me navigate the tube there. I have no sense of direction at all so don't want to deal with it myself.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Nic said:
Prestige
What's prestigious about bad planning?
People think it's a fancy city/good tourism place whether it actually is or not.
Maybe it's because I worked in banking, but I was completely unaware that London had a fancy city vibe. It's so often famous for having to "overcome" the bad feelings about it and actually surprises people by being a little fancy.
London is very much looked at in the same way as NYC is. People travel from all over the world to see it. We grew up in NY and know NYC isn't that great. However, to the rest of the world, they can't wait to go there. Same principle with London, except you throw on top the English accents, and yeah....there ya go.
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My Parents got to go to New York once... They both said it was great, but that they were glad to be back home, lol.
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I enjoy going into NYC for a day or 2 but not much more than that. I am a country girl I love my space. Though there is something to be said for it taking less than 15 minutes to get to a store or 45 to find a good place to eat.
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People Go to NYC for a vacation? No thanks.
I consider Austin to be a big city.The town beside my village (yes I live in a village). is a conference location. They have a population of approx 20,000 people. And they have several hotels with conference centers. One of which is a govt owned hotel (never heard of that before). They also have a Civic center with an arena that can seat 22,000. and a Preforming arts theater (both of which are also owned by the government). The city beside it has a city owned 10,000 seat civic center.
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Most of the conferences I've been to have been at the Anaheim convention center in Anaheim, CA though.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Most of the conferences I've been to have been at the Anaheim convention center in Anaheim, CA though.
I was just there 2 weeks ago for Celebration. I love that convention center.
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Scott what kind of prices are you seeing that makes you say this?
I know Spiceworld Austin is like $399, is London $799?The hotel in Austin connected to the AT&T center was $200 a night. The last time I stayed in London at the Blue it was about the same.
We just found out that our new Star Wars Celebration will be in London (again) in July 2016. I'm planning on attending and I expect I'll pay around $250/night for a decent room.
It seems nearly impossible these days in most major metros to pay less than $200/night unless you want to stay in a crappy place.
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@Dashrender said:
Scott what kind of prices are you seeing that makes you say this?
I know Spiceworld Austin is like $399, is London $799?Price of the conference isn't a factor. It's the cost of getting there, staying there and getting around. The tickets are often free for entrance. Even if you pay full price (and who does that) it's a trivial expense component in the cost of attending the conference. A few hundred dollars to get in the door but easily thousands to arrive and stay. You are looking at hostel level accommodations just to get down to $140 a night!
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@Dashrender said:
We just found out that our new Star Wars Celebration will be in London (again) in July 2016. I'm planning on attending and I expect I'll pay around $250/night for a decent room.
It seems nearly impossible these days in most major metros to pay less than $200/night unless you want to stay in a crappy place.
That's why those expensive "major metros" is what I'm questioning. You don't get these prices in places like Austin, Las Vegas, Orlando, Malaga, etc. There are plenty of really nice places that are great for conferences that are 30-50% the price of places like London or New York City.
And the nightly cost is only one factor. It's the logistics, flights, intra-city transportation, etc.
Even coming from not far away, I can attend Austin cheaper for three days than London for two.
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@Dashrender said:
It seems nearly impossible these days in most major metros to pay less than $200/night unless you want to stay in a crappy place.
Outside of London I rarely have to pay that much for a family of four, let alone for a single person. Now I'm not hanging out in Paris or Tokyo, but I'm in bug cities all the time and the costs are nothing like London. London IS one of the handful of ultra-expensive world cities up there with NYC, Paris, Tokyo, Singapore, etc. It's at the very pinnacle of costs.
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The biggest increase in prices I see are for everything else. Taxi's are a bit higher in London (I hire a car or do a charter thing most everywhere I travel and it was a crap ton more in London).
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
800K. It's the fourth largest just in Texas. It's definitely a smallish city.
It's big by European standards. Only Birmingham and London are bigger in the UK. Are a disproportionate number of conferences held in London? I wouldn't know as I hate conferences and try and avoid them as much as possible. But a quick Google comes up with conferences all over Europe - I'm not seeing a massive focus on London.
It's not a "small" city. But it is positively tiny compared to something like London or even to Dallas or Houston.
It wouldn't even make this list...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_cities_in_Europe
Not that all of those aren't large, but it's not comparable to the big cities. It feels more like Cleveland or Manchester, I would imagine. It has a nice city center but even compared to Sevilla it doesn't feel large because of the differences in how American and European cities are zones. I think you'd feel that it was pretty small too. The population, even in Austin which does this less than most American cities, just kind of sprawls and isn't what Europeans would consider a city. Walking the city center in Austin with over 800K people feels no bigger and with fewer municipal resources of a Spanish city of 700K.
To be fair, Dallas and Houston both officially inch past Madrid in population but Madrid gives the feel of a city many, many times their size. Because both Dallas and Houston are mostly open space, people have yards and there are cows grazing inside the city limits. It takes hours to drive through them and Dallas' city center is smaller than Austins. Madrid, by comparison, is all city center and then it ends.
This difference in city definitions makes it dramatically different between the US and most of Europe. What you call a city and what we do is rather different. If you were in "Austin" driving through fields and were told that you were in the city of Austin you'd be like "but this is a farm!"
