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BGonline.org Forums
Factors for Tournament Attendance (2)
Posted By: Jake Jacobs In Response To: Factors for Tournament Attendance (2) (Chuck Bower)
Date: Monday, 5 October 2009, at 1:04 a.m.
I don't know if it is the shape of things to come, but ...
I spend most of my time in three places. I live in Singapore. The hotel we currently use for visiting firemen offers me a corporate rate of around (FX rates vary) $175 for a small but fairly nice "Superior," and $225 for the same room, but with club privileges (and let us not scoff at a free happy two hours with hors d' oeuvres).
In Tokyo, where I actually stay in hotels (as opposed to negotiating rates for the people we bring in) our corporate rate is over $300 a night for a club room, and about $250 for a room without club privileges. In that neighborhood hotels I used in the past were around $150, but for rooms so small that you had to step into the hallway to change your mind.
Only Thailand offers bargains.
Having been away so long I thought it was "just Asia." Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong - these are very expensive cities, so I thought of the prices as being comparable to, say, having to stay in Manhattan. Backgammon tournaments, not being in Midtown, would always offer room rates under a hundred bucks.
But will they? Last year I went to Alaska for a cruise, staying in Anchorage overnight before sailing, and spending a night in Vancouver at the other end. The hotel in Vancouver was (apologies to the staff, who were all very nice) a dumpy HoJos in the middle of the vice district: price = $175. The hotel in Anchorage was a Comfort Inn. The neighborhood was okay, and there was a 10-foot tall stuffed bear in the lobby. (Actually, there were all sorts of stuffed things in the lobby - the clerk may have been Norman's cousin Nanook Bates.) But it was a Comfort Inn, and it cost $240
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