by AlwaysImprove » Mon Mar 28, 2011 10:37 am
Yes. Typically Surf City asks you to stay in hotels on the list.
This is different from what happens in ASA land. In ASA land towns like Midland Texas, Johnson City Tennessee, Montgomery Alabama get the hotels to collude together and jack the rates through the roof. All the hotels in the city get together and set a price premium for that week. It is common for hotels to charge over 50%-75% the week of nationals compared to the week before or the week after for the same hotels. According to most ASA does not get this money. It likely goes to the hotel owners and the visitors bureau in taxes.
A team we were with would routinely book a room 45 mins out of town. Stay the first night, then go to the hotel that has the tournament, let them know we are staying down the road for $75 a night. We would get the host hotel for that same $75 a night rate, when everyone else in the host hotel is paying $145. On a 10 day tournament that can be a $700 dollar difference for one family and a $8100 savings for a 12 family team.
Geographic isolation is a huge part of the pulling the ASA hotel rate scam. That is why most ASA tournaments are held in the most remote of towns. Those are the towns that can make huge profits off of ASA. Ah, and do forget the 20% tax they will charge you as well.
Premier does a good job of getting a discount rate from a number of hotels in the area. They then ask the hotel for a kick back. You will often find the rate at the hotel competitive or lower than if you called the hotel yourself. It is impossible to pull the ASA hotel scam in an area like SoCal where there are a lot of hotels.
Also ASA allows the locals to set the pace of the tournament. What the locals do is try to have opening ceremonies on a Monday, hoping to get you in town for the whole weekend. Then have the first pool game on Tuesday, the second on Wednesday, The first elimination round on Friday, with the second elimination round not happening until Saturday. The main goal is to keep as many teams in town as possible. They take a basic tournament that can be comfortably held in 5 days, with ample time for ceremonies and and breaks and a reasonable pace of games and turn into a 10 day event. Again you are looking at $500 per family and $6000 per team in additional hotel revenue.
That is a net expense of over $14,000 dollars for a team, only on hotel. The usual calcluation is that you spend what you spent on hotel on food, gas and other expenses. So you are looking at a total expense of $28,000 for the average team.
The real problem with backend loading the schedule like this is if you get rain. There are many instances of ASA throwing out the double elim bracket, not finishing tournaments etc. because of rain. So you are in town for 10 days for a tournament that should only take 5 days, yet you have to accept that single elimination and not finishing tournaments is a likely outcome.
Premier, you get into town on Monday night, enjoy the open ceremonies, first and second pool games on Tues, first round of elim on Wed, and half the teams can go home by Thursday night. All very relaxed. A nice pace.
ASA became such a massive rip off that most of the gold coaches that go to these tournaments year after year will have nothing to do with them. 16U coaches with expierence are the same. Younger team coaches may be less aware, less knowledgeable so ASA is going to go focus on jacking cash from that market now.
