YAPC::Europe 2013 “Future Perl”

Week minus 24. Booking a hotel and discounts

28/02/13 00:31 by Andrey Shitov (‎ash‎)

Dear YAPC::Europe 2013 attendees and those who is still considering joining (don't wait, join now),

This week we're publishing our regular weekly newsletter on Wednesday instead of a usual Sunday (ok, even Wednesday evening :-). Guess why? We have done a lot of work during the last few days. Preparing a great conference is a very exciting thing by itself, maybe even more interesting than debating about the Perl versioning and naming :-) Not only we try to make the attendees happier but we also would be proud to establish new standards for hosting future conferences.

Anyway, our main news today is: we launched the Hotel reservation service on our site.

What is it? It is a page where you can see all the hotels that are available in Kiev, and find them on the map so that you can easily understand how far from the venue the hotel is. The venue, of course, is also marked on the map.

There's a list of about 200 hotels, hostels, aparthotels and apartments that are waiting for your reservation. For a quick reference of price levels you can select the dates you are going to stay in Kiev and the number of people in the room. Click "Search hotels" button and get the real time prices immediately.

Explore the hotels either by scrolling the list on the left or by clicking the hotel markers on the map. For each hotel we display (apart from their names and addresses) the minimal available price for the whole stay period and the distance from the venue.

The venue we selected for the conference is located in the very centre of the city, so there are plenty of hotels nearby, and you don't need to use any public transport if you book a room in one of them.

This is not the end of the story. We are pretty much sure that the prices you find on our accommodation search service are the lowest available on the internet - would it be a hotel site or an online travel agency.

Even more, for the majority of the hotels in Kiev you even don't need to pay upfront. Just reserve a room (credit card will still be needed for confirming your booking) and pay at the hotel on arrival!

All done? No! There are a few hotels for which you as an attendee can get a discount. Those are marked with a red label in the bubble on the map. The link will lead you to a page where you can choose your personal discount. It can either be a 5% discount or a fixed discount of approx. 25 euro for the whole stay.

Explore the hotels by clicking on "Learn more and Book now". You will go to our partner's site ostrovok.ru, where you will see available rooms, photos and detailed descriptions of the selected hotel.

Would you like to book it, do it on ostrovok.ru. Even if you are not yet 100% sure you attend the conference, you may safely find and select a hotel which is refundable, i.e. often there's no cancellation fee if you cancel early enough (please read the hotel policy on the site for more information on that).

This searching service is available in two languages, English and Russian (booking and payment are also available in both of them).

Just a few extra notes about all this.

We do not take any extra money from the attendees who book rooms using the service. All we raise there is an affiliate commission that we are going to add to the conference budget.

All the prices should be really lower that anywhere else. Should you find cheaper price for the same room, let us know.

So, booking a hotel you not only receive a better price but also support the conference paying no extra money! Book it: act.yapc.eu/ye2013/accommodation/index.html.

If you'd like to learn more about the service behind hotel reservation we work with, please refer ostrovok.ru/about/en/. Also take into account that at least 50% of the organisers team already used the service themselves.

Next week we will tell more about what we are working on to make the conference the best ever YAPC::Europe.