Conference capitalism

Working a booth for three days at a conference gave me a lot of time to consider the closed ecosystem of the conference venue/hotel.

In this particular case, it was the Marriott Wardman Park, but it could have been pretty much anywhere. The Marriott WP is in the Woodley Park/Adams Morgan neighborhood of the District They Call Columbia, so it’s not like it’s the only place out in the middle of nowhere. But it’s still closed.

If you don’t want to take your food and drink from the hotel, you have to walk outside to one of the eateries on Connecticut Avenue or Woodley. And if you’re dodging between seminars, workshops and sessions, that’s extra time you don’t have. (The conference provided no food to the general attendees, so you fended for yourself.)

Moreover, this past weekend we had temperatures in the 20s, with a wind chill even lower, so making that short trek was even more daunting a prospect.

The hotel was Metro-accessible, so that’s how my colleagues and I got there the first day. But on the second, one of them drove in and parked in the Marriott’s garage. He commented, “I realized the hotel’s business model: extortion.”

And that’s basically what you get in that closed eco-system. Everything comes with that we-can-get-away-with-this surcharge. If you didn’t want to bundle up and brave the arctic wind outside, you just sucked it up. A plain brewed (not even cold-brewed; whatever that is) coffee is $4, and don’t even think about refills. So is an apple or a banana. A bare-bones sandwich is $8. A prepacked salad of a fistful of greens and a slice of tomato is $10.

And parking your car for two hours is $26.

But it’s more than that. The closed ecosystem means that service is also we-can-get-away-with-this lackadaisical. Things get done (ish) when they get done. Or they don’t.

This point was driven home to me on Friday, when a colleague and I went to get one of those overpriced sandwiches at a coffee-and-prepacked sandwich stand, the only budget (relatively) alternative to the hotel bar or restaurant. It being lunchtime, the line to pay was extensive, and nearly immobile. I noticed two contributory factors:

In an age where everything related to credit card transactions is done electronically, with purchases under $20 requiring no signature, the Marriott’s sandwich stand printed out receipts and required customers to sign them. (With the line for the tip included, so at a minimum you had to zero that out and write in the total in addition to your signature.)

But then one of the two women working the cash registers picked up her cash drawer and walked away. Apparently her shift was over, and there was no replacement. Twenty people lined up were not a concern at all.

Closed ecosystem. It’s like the Mafia, but with sales tax.