And I'm sure you could find even cheaper places than the Candlewood out there as well if you were willing to look....The South Indy Super 8 is listed as low as $102/night.

My wife's first gen con we stayed with friends in a downtown room.  This was great for her as she was in a wheelchair at the time.  We have been going with our family ever since and we stay well outside downtown.  (We stayed at the quality inn east for 3 years) room rates have been steadily increasing though.

We run LARPS so a downtown room would be very convenient as we wouldn't have to carry materials from the Gate 10 lots to whichever space has our game.  Also, being able to go back up to the room for a spell is helpful also.

I respectfully disagree with the poster that says it's not a different experience.  It was for us. 

I consistently book outside of the blocks.  I have found a Super 8 that works well.  Cheap.  Waffle House right beside it.  Steak & Shake a block away. Just use Uber.  Basically, my dream location.  (OK.  Maybe I have simple dreams.)

Even with the Uber, it is still cheaper.  And with how some of the drivers drive, it's almost like riding a roller coaster/thrill ride each morning & night. I arrive on Tuesday and stay until the following Tuesday.  With really long gaming days at the Con.  Really makes the travel easier.  Of course, I go alone so what works for me might not work for others.

The hotel is $79 per night for the 7 days (Expedia).  It is less than 10 miles out (Apple maps puts it at 9.3 miles & 13 minutes.)  So a bargain.  Plus, Waffle House.

ok so its been pointed out here several times that just as mikeptas says above everyone has different criteria for their hotel room. To many people the location of the room is not important and they are going to enjoy the con no matter what. Others either require a downtown/connected room or at the least prefer it to the point where it is important enough that the con just isn't enjoyable without one. Obviously neither view is wrong in any way. With the sheer number of people who go to GenCon and the small amount of downtown hotel rooms it is simply impossible to accommodate everyone. There is no system that will change this fact. The way that the lottery is done now is at least arguably as fair as any other and in my opinion people who advocate for a "more fair" system are generally describing one that is more fair for themselves

_____________________________________
Alec Usticke, Fans of Gen Con Facebook Group

And if you tried to simplify it by having an option like "any downtown room" it would further reinforce the idea that only the downtown rooms were worth getting!

Perhaps if everyone could just be polite and only get a downtown room if they truly needed one.  What is that?  Everyone is laughing at me now?  Hmm, fair enough.

Do I truly need to get up at 7am instead of 6am to make an 8am start? No. BUT this year I will and I am ok with the extra $80 a night. :)

G
 

Where do I start....I'm stunned beyond the point of words to articulate thoughts on this.

Mike Boozer 
Customer Service & Event Team Manager
Gen Con LLC

;)

You have a page listing all the available hotels.  In the weeks leading up to the lottery, people would need to access the page and set their preferences.

The page should have two sort options - distance and price.
You rank your hotel of preference from 1 to whatever. 

You enter your

• arrival and departure dates,
  
• number of people in the room,
  
• preferred bed configuration (can be ranked or any)
  
• and your credit card info.
  

If you feel you need the discretion to choose between a King at the Hyatt or a double-double at the Marriott, let me note that most folks end up taking what they can get anyway.  And you could have a preference box to weight bed configuration above hotel.  Or a tweak that lets you process through any downtown hotel configuration before giving up an dropping down to airport locations.

I get it if you enjoy the scrum of lottery day.  That's a legitimate preference, but don't tell me it couldn't be automated.
 

I think the difficulty people are looking at is this--with the current system, I can not only prioritize hotels, but I could for example prioritize a Hyatt double-double over a Marriott King, but a Marriott double-double over anything else--except a Hilton suite. But other Hilton rooms would be at the bottom.

It's true that with the current system a lot of people just have to take whatever is available. But many people--thousands, based on the number of downtown rooms that get grabbed--are able to prioritize in these really complex ways. And they do, or at least I have in the past, and I don't think I'm alone in this. Changing to a much less nuanced priority system, while still keeping a random lottery, would

a) prevent anyone from prioritizing in ways that weren't coded into the system, while
b) only benefiting people who are unable to login during their time.

I suspect you'll have a lot more people upset by taking away their in-the-moment choice than you'll make happy by automating.

You're asking every participant to rank every room in the system. That's a ton of work and will be prone to mistakes.

Your scheme also ignores the fact that my priorities change as soon as someone else in my group gets a room. My preference is something like "two of these seven people get downtown rooms, at least one of which has two beds."

IIRC, the first year they did a lottery those times weren't assigned until noon Sunday. THAT was a waste of an afternoon. The current system of getting a time assigned Friday night means you only have to log in at your time.

Taking away peoples variables on room choices is not a viable solution as well. There is a lot of information that people would want to enter but could not.
Not saying it could not be automated, just saying it would not be a good choice.

Finally the code is not a matter of sophistication, its time and resources. We have other initiatives that have priorities. The current system works. I suspect that we would get more people upset if we changed to the system as proposed. 

Mike Boozer
Customer Service & Event Team Manager
Gen Con LLC

Is it really that big a inconvenience to log in 5 minutes before your assigned time and pick a hotel?  You would definitely have more upset people if the system "picked" a hotel for you.  I can just imagine the gnashing of teeth when someone logs in a finds a the system picked a king in the third ring when they wanted a double at the Westin.

Then that would lead to a secondary “after assignment” trading system between attendees who got assigned something insufficient (1 king bed without a sleeper sofa) when they needed a double double with a sleeper sofa), or unnecessary (1 person in that double double), or the wrong hotel chain to earn rewards, or...

At which point GenCon and Qrooms have to rescind the no-room-trade /transfer policy, or open it back up. I have a feeling there’s a really good reason why that rule was put in place. 

As frustrating as getting a later lottery time is, automating the system based on a limited number of coded priorities  will cause far more chaos than the lottery.