Is CCI Outgrowing San Diego?

Yesterday was a frustrating one for many people hoping to secure a discounted hotel room of their choice through Comic-Con International and their sponsored travel service. Many came away with no room at all, or had to make significant effort to end up with a room that was not among their first choices.

The story isn't that frustration. Given today's dissemination of comics knowledge on-line, a traffic jam was inevitable. The story also isn't the southern California comics-at-its-core pop culture industry gathering and marketplace reaching some ill-defined tipping point of dissatisfaction. Big events like San Diego are always losing their appeal for some group. That's their nature. Old-guard alternative cartoonists stopped coming out in force eight or nine years ago. My friends who like kitsch, zombie movies and masked wrestling, most of them seem to have stopped going in the last three or four years. If attendance does plunge, it's not going to be about it not being the thing to do. It's always someone's first show, and it's likely someone's 31st, and prominent pros have been extolling the virtues of being cooler by not going for at least 20 years.

I'd say the real story is structural. People sat at their computers yesterday not just looking for a hotel room for a certain price close to where they like to socialize; many were looking for any hotel room at all. I've been going off and on for 12 years. I've booked rooms two weeks before the show. I know of hotels off the reservation grid, I know a couple of bed and breakfasts, I once used a service to rent a condo downtown, and I've used standard on-line booking. Avenues that used to yield a room days before the show are booked solid months and months in advance, or at punishing prices. Two years ago I could assure people of finding a room unless they booked in July. Now I can barely rustle one up for myself by booking in September.

What that says to me is that San Diego may not have enough hotel rooms for those who want to stay in them. Telling someone to book miles and miles away seems justifiable if they're booking in June, but it's not the kind of thing you should be telling someone trying to find a place six months in advance. While most discussions of the show potentially moving have been about exhibition space, and a few about parking and other city-type services, this is the first year that housing has seemed like a major league factor, too. People used to joke about Las Vegas, but I bet there are a lot of people out there that would have loved to close down the slow-opening convention travel site yesterday with the option of firing up a room at the Orleans. It should be an interesting few years ahead.

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posted 11:06 pm PST | Permalink
 

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