roux wrote:
If you're talking about rooms, you'll need to look at past Wikimania events (preferably those within North America, as there will be similar numbers), specifically for how many room nights were booked. Most properties have a 12-18 month horizon beyond which they will not guarantee room cost, and will provide estimates only. Usage of meeting room facilities will often be gratis based on food & beverage minimums being met, which can be very high--but trust me when I say it's simpler to feed a thousand people at a single breakfast buffet than to send them out into the wilds of Toronto. Half would just order room service anyway.
The 2005 Wikimania housed delegates in Harvard's dorms. Light buffet breakfasts should be included in room costs. For evening meals Wikimaniacs have a habit of congregating in the lobby and going out together for a dinner. Hiding in one's room and ordering room service is not a usual practice. In the U of T area there used to be any number of interesting restaurants along College and Bloor Streets. Are they no longer there?
Looking at the past Wikimanias, I think we could ballpark between 500-750pax attending, at 2 or 4 to a room that means about 180-300 rooms. That is a *lot* of rooms for a single hotel. We should look at the Delta Chelsea (if aiming for downtown), or possibly the Doubletree (if staying near the airport, which I'd advise against--it's in the middle of nowhere). The Chelsea has function rooms but the maximum capacity is 550pax in reception format--not sure if that would work for Wikimania (and smaller capacities for other room formats--seminar, etc). The Doubletree does have the convenience of being across from the Toronto Congress Centre, which has approximately eleventybillion square feet of space--that would, of course, be an added cost.
The hotels that you mentioned are not exactly names that I would associate with modest prices. To keep things in perspective, in Buenos Aires we paid US$25.00 per night for hotel rooms. Remember that many of those who attend are students who receive scholarships to attend. We want more people from poor countries.
We should look also at group rates for air. We can probably bank on blocks of people arriving from a few major cities--if we can get bulk rates on airfare, or make such rates available, that would help people a lot.
Based on past experience, I could see this as a possibility from Frankfurt or San Francisco, but how much tourism some want to do before or after the conference could affect this. Those who attend are a very diverse group from many countries.
Ec