|
GG, I think Rose was sold out by early September... basically as soon as the Miami show was over, every found out how totally fucked January would be and started booking.
I called them and got the "only a few big suites left" deal... those were expensive at the time (but now not far out of line for a regular room at Harrahs).
Now, let me tell you a little bit about shows, and why there is the hotel room thing:
Basically, almost every hotel that has a convention center attached to it runs the convention center to put guests in the rooms. There is often a direct tie between number of square feet taken for the show and the minimum number of rooms that the show has to guarantee to get the space. Anything less than that number, and the show ends up paying for rooms that it cannot use out of pocket.
Go over that number, and there is a small travel agent style commission made.
If they didn't do that, the cost of the show floor space would likely be double or maybe even not made available.
By compressing the time frame of the shows together, AVN also benefits from having to deliver less rooms for less days (Instead of maybe 1000 room nights per day for 7 days, they maybe only have to deliver 1200 a night for 4 or 5 nights, example) because the space for both shows at the Sands is always tied up for the full 10 days or so (they cannot run another anything with a porn show at that end of the building).
AVN cuts their entire show time down by 3 days, saves themselves a butload of money, gets rid of the new years day load in costs, and the bottom line looks much better as a result. They can lose 10-20% attendance and still come out far, far ahead.
It is short sighted to the max... but it does improve the bottom line.
Alex
|