Hotelpocalypse has come and gone….and it wasn’t too bad?

The most anxious day of the year – the day hotel rooms for San Diego Comic-Con go on sale – has come and gone, with some huge changes for the process. As we reported previously, there were major changes to the system this year:

• Once you got through to the booking page inventory was LIVE, and you could literally book the hotel you wanted – or the one you had to settle for. In the past you put in a LIST of hotels, and through magic CGI hocus pocus you would be assigned a room based on the time you got in to the system, and maybe not get a close hotel. 

• This time, you had to put down a NON-REFUNDABLE two night deposit for the room once you booked it. In the past, you could get a refund for a few weeks. 

Both of these changes were implemented because of the ongoing hotel rooms squeeze. The most desirable hotels of San Diego are simply making fewer rooms available for the convention block. They are doing this because they would prefer to get $800 a night than $350 a night. So, yeah, we get it. However, for those who use connections to get a room – which is a lot of people, including some of your favorites – it’s a whole new world order.

I participated in the hotel sale today to check it out even though I already have a hotel room through connections – look, I’ve been going to SDCC for 40 years so I’m entitled to connections – and if I didn’t have a room I would have been very sad. I waited for nearly an hour in the queue and when i got through all the close hotels were long gone. A few had rooms available but not Friday, which seems to be the hot night of the show. 

The new system has definitely created a lot of anxiety among my comics industry pals, who also get their rooms through connections. I’ll return to this in a bit, but for the thousands of regular folks who go to enjoy themselves and makes Comic-Con Comic-Con, the new system was actually…a success. 

Kerry Dixon of the Unofficial SDCC Blog, has a very long and thorough post on the process, and honestly she wrote most of what I was going to say. She also has polls and data which shows more people felt satisfied with what happened this time. I think KNOWING where you were going to stay, and not having the uncertainty of waiting a month for an email is far preferable even if you end up at the airport (which is not too bad) instead of at the Marriott Marquis. Being able to just put in your credit card number and know you had a room – and being able to plan based on the location – feels good and yes, empowering (the term that the CCI folks used to describe the changes.) So honestly, this new system is not bad. 

Even the Reddit thread on yesterday’s sale – The REDDIT thread where people love to complain!!! – was generally peaceful and accepting.  

Dixon did suggest one very important change – there is no timer on the cart, meaning once you get through and are putting in your info and payment, you could still get sniped. That is kind of heartbreaking, so maybe a 5-10 minute timer? I don’t know the logistics of this, but the lack of a cart definitely caused more anxiety. 

She also suggested moving the sale to a weekend – which is when the badge sale takes place. I think this is also a great suggestion. The older lottery system usually took 30 minutes. This time, it was a solid hour or more for many (including myself), as the access to the backend was deliberately slowed to give more people time to get a room. As the hotel sale is only announced a few days in advance, some people may not have been able to make arrangements to set aside the time. 

All that said, the hotel economy is changing, as the con continues to evolve. Rob Salkowitz had some thoughts in his ICv2 column today.

For attendees, this complicates the already fraught and expensive process of traveling to Comic-Con.  For professionals and staff, it means shrinking availability and uncertainty around lodging.  And for exhibitors, it could mean fewer attendees, attendees with smaller budgets, or a show that is too far out of reach for families and younger fans.

CCI is acutely aware of this problem.  Whenever Comic-Con communications czar David Glanzer speaks publicly, he raises concerns about the size, cost and terms of the hotel block.  He has often pointed portentously toward the “break glass in case of emergency” button: Comic-Con pulling up stakes from San Diego and setting up shop elsewhere if downtown hotels don’t play ball.  There are only so many times you can do that, though, before you either have to put up or shut up.

To put all this in perspective, I checked out Hotels.com for the going rates for hotels during SDCC which are just on the open market. It is an alarming sight. 

Even the Horton Grand – where I stayed on a Tuesday for about $260 a night as recently as four years ago – is now $800 a night. The Horton Grand is one of my favorite San Diego hotels, scene of many hauntings, and used to be part of the hotel block but pulled out a few years ago because…well, they can charge $800 a night. 

As Dixon pointed out – the fundamental fact of all of this is there are not enough downtown hotel rooms for everyone who wants them. That’s just how it is. I saw a lot of acceptance of less desirable hotel locations on Reddit on other social media yesterday, part of the security of knowing. Okay you take the shuttle. It is not really the end of the world. 

But with more of the “good” rooms going for such high prices, they are not going to go to people in the comics or cosplay communities, I can tell you that. I imagine that high-roller collectors who go for the exclusives can afford the rates but last year I saw more complaining (although on Reddit) about the overall price of the con even from those types. And yes, Hollywood studios don’t like paying $1000 for a hotel room, either. 

I just wonder how the overall economics of con will evolve. Disney keeps raising the prices on the parks, but people keep going. Families will pay thousands of dollars for a Disney World vacation but they know they are getting Disney World! Comic-Con has been facing some headwinds post pandemic. Hollywood is a shambles, with consolidation and production cutbacks and studios have been cooling on Comic-Con for a while. For publishers, it is a hugely expensive proposition, and just breaking even is a huge success. More and more of them are questioning the expense. We’re living in crazy times, but there comes a breaking point. 

Still, these things do find their level. Comic-Con is incredibly important to the economics of the city of San Diego, and all the local businesses count on the economic boost they get. As David Glanzer says if more people can’t afford to go, the con will get a bit smaller and the numbers will have to adjust. 

Everyone Comic-Con is interesting in its own way and this year’s should have a lot of intrigue. The Beat will be here to report on them!

A final note: The Beat’s name for the hotel sale has always been Hoteloween, but no one else uses it because Hotelpocalypse has become the preferred term. I  liked mine because with the lottery system, you didn’t know what you were going to get. With the switch to instant results and empowerment, I throw in the towel. Hotelpocalypse it is.