Hi, Folks-

If you plan to come to the premiere and want to stay at the Omni on
the downtown mall on July 26 you might want to try to book your rooms
TODAY. For those of you who might want a room (or if you want to pass
this information on to friends who want to stay there) I will explain
the situation in the rest of this email--the rest of you can ignore
this email.

Here is the situation:
-I had hoped to get a good group rate at the Omni for everybody
coming in from out of town for the premiere. Until today, Chrysler
Corp had virtually the entire hotel booked on that weekend for a big
event, so the few rooms the Omni had held back were going for close
to $300. The Chrysler event was canceled today, so pretty much the
entire hotel opened up. I knew about the likely cancelation in
advance, so I had arranged a meeting with Omni group sales today,
expecting them to be hungry and offer a good rate for our potentially
large group.

-When I met with a woman from group sales today she was not acting
very hungry. She offered me a rate of $219 per room, with me having
to personally guarantee 80% of whatever number of rooms I blocked
out, and she did not like the idea of large numbers of people wanting
Saturday only and was unwilling to consider a large block for just
one night even at the $219 rate. She claimed that they never have any
trouble filling up on the weekends even at much higher rates.

-When I checked online (kayak.com), the Omni was available at $145
per room, and I actually booked one room at this rate. At first the
woman in sales said that this was impossible, then she said that it
must be a short-term anomaly because every room in the hotel was
dumped on the market today, fooling "the system" into thinking that
it is going to be a rough weekend for them. She advised me to grab
the rooms online quickly as they probably won't be there tomorrow.

-When I tried to get a second room at the same rate a couple of
minutes later, it was not available, but $174 was still available.

SO, you might want to book your room ASAP if you want one, and pass
this on to your buddies who might want rooms there.

Happy hunting!

Deke Ealy
Producer
Live From...the Hook