Antheria changes hotel ten days before launch
Something strange is going down in SoCal. Antheria, scheduled to start October 1 in Los Angeles, has been forced to switch hotels, according to convention co-chair 2.
The new venue is the Best Western Sunrise, 20-40 minutes down the road in Redondo Beach. Those wishing to stay must reserve new rooms, currently at a higher room rate.
Reservations for the Westin LAX will not transfer, and must be canceled by 6PM September 28 to avoid a charge. This can be done via the online reservation system, or by phone. Those wishing to cancel their convention registration must email by September 24.
See also: Antheria to bring furs, togas to California
Antheria has a significant lineup of guests, including Stan Sakai, Matthew Ebel, Mark Merlino and Uncle Kage. But it has reportedly faced the myriad issues of a new convention - including new staff, registration hiccups, and missed communication with dealers.
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Comments
"Reportedly" ...by whom? Any examples or sources? o.o
Isil and Ferality for two - see here (down 2/3 of the page) and 2's journal. Thornwolf also had problems.
Part of the problem is an extreme lack of clarity over who is running the event. I saw one suggestion to just drop by the Anaheim fur house if you wanted to get in contact. That's great for those in Anaheim.
They apparently have a board, and I'm pretty sure 2, Jibba and Waggs are involved somehow. Other than that . . .
Whoa, that's some wacky drama. *stands clear* From what it looks like, 2 and Jibba are co-chairs, but I won't jump to any conclusions.
It's far from an ideal situation, but it's a first-time con. They should be able to pull things together, especially if the weather's nice.
The con web site, http://www.antheria.org, has a (lengthy) announcement on its main page and information about the new hotel on its hotel page.
Agggh! It's things like these that make me want to just push everyone aside and say, "LET ME DO IT!" But, alas, I'm not a popufur, so no one would pay me any heed or attention. What a con neeeeeds, is someone who could tell 2, "Hey, stop playing L4D and give us some input, or help us work on this crisis that has occurred." You know, someone with a backbone that can get shit done. Someone like.... ME! >.< Of course no one would ever let that happen tho. =p
Maybe the hotel thought Antheria was some awful disease or something.
2's been busy lately, with the whole Comedy Store thing it probably is tricky to set up a convention at the same time.
One story going around is that an impersonator claiming to be a convention co-chair contacted the hotel at some point and canceled the contract. By the time this was discovered, it was too late to undo the damage.
The above may or may not be accurate, and should be treated as unsubstantiated. I hope we get the real story from reliable sources.
I doubt the story is true. Wouldn't the Hotel have asked something that only the real convention co-chair guy (or whoever else that made the contract) would know, like a confirmation number, credit card number, or at least a call to the real guys running behind Antheria that someone on their behalf was trying to get out of the contract? Unless the guy had disturbingly large amounts of personal info, I find it hard to believe the hotel would rip the contract up just like that.
While it is possible that not all hotels have that much in brainpower running them, and if such is the case it's good they found out NOW then during the convention, someone who runs a con told me someone has to be present in order to do it, but as I said not all hotels are like those they worked with obviously.
However, there is one case I can where you wouldn't need to, and that is if the hotel decides to back out for some reason. That is, it is possible that a /b/tard contacted the hotel (like what happened with FoxMas) and the hotel backed out because they got freaked out.
It is possible the hotel used the excuse that someone 'claiming to be the runner' called and canceled, because that would be better then telling your customer. 'We think you people are freaks and we don't want you here'.
That is just a theory. Personally I would hope I'm wrong on it.
Or it could just be as simple as not having enough confirmed attendees to keep the group rate for the room block. Given a choice between "charge people a lot more and have quite a lot of non-furs in the hotel" and "change hotels", I can see something like this happening.
Of course, I'm blatantly guessing just as much as anyone else here. The point is, there are plenty of very mundane reasons a first-time con can wind up in this sort of situation.
Issues I see with the Antheria official story.
I am writing this as anon, but trust me I have worked serveral conventions over the last 10 years and been part of the hotel team several times too.
When negociating with a hotel, to get a good contract usually takes several meetings with the hotel. These meetings include all kinds of details, things like room block allocation, catering, and many others. A hotel will have a single person (sales or catering rep) assigned to our convention. This means that we have a single person on our team, talking to a single person on their team. Both teams know of other team members but really it boils down to two primaries.
If a B/tard was to walk up and try to cancel the event, the front desk person might not recognize that this person is not legit. That will be fine though because the front desk doesn't have the ability to cancel the whole event. Instead the front desk will call the hotel contact for that event, and then hotel contact will walk up to the lobby right up to the B/tard and probably say something like "Who the hell are you, where's xxxx?"
The story about someone calling and cancelling is 100% fiction.
It is possible that there was someone who called the hotel and said "your about to host a nambla convention, and you don't event know it, here's a link to a bunch of cub-porn to proove it" at which point the hotel would run screaming depending on how up front and honest the convention comittee has been with the hotel.
Up front and honest sometimes boils down to things as simple as dresscode. If you walk into a hotel to negociate wearing a t-shirt and jeans they'll treat you like the unprofessional you are, If you walk in wearing suits and such (as 2 is known for) if they hear this kind of stuff from the b/tard they will likely think your trying to hide the true nature of your event. (Usually we wear polo shirts and nice pants to our hotel meetings, nice, but not nice enough to let them think we have money)
In the end we'll find out what the truth is, it'll take time. If you hear about lawsuit or cancellation fees against Antheria from the hotel, you'll know the hotel thinks antheria cancelled. Otherwise, it was likely the other way around.
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