English Chess Forum

Not only is Sunningdale full for next month (and has been for some time) but also Barcelo Hinckley Island also completely sold out for weekends 4 and the final Bank Holiday weekend.

Any spare twins I will be grateful to take for Sunningdale and either Barcelo - any captains/players similarly up the Swanee I have special link to Holiday Inns (5 of them within 10 miles) where you can get 2 nights twin room Fri and Sat for around £69 total so £17.25 pppn room only - let me know via [email protected]

Kev McCarthy
Pandora's Box

Kev,

Is it just the twins at Sunningdale are full, or is it the singles as well. From what I remember in the past is that Sunningdale have a very limited number of twins anyway

I would expect to return some rooms to the pool once I know who is playing in the AMCA teams. Many AMCA players are local to Sunningdale and won't need rooms.

I can start putting them on eBay if that makes it fairer?

It really is about time that the 4NCL rate should be paid in full when booked and non-refundable to stop the wanton overbooking - we have several players without accomodation again so I will have to book twin rooms for the next 3 weekends with local Holiday Inns but best prices for them are non refundable so the total of 15 nights worth of twin room B&B commission will be lost to 4 NCL yet again - presume thats aroun £100 from my team alone - then lo and behold 20 spare rooms will appear when it is too late

KMcCarthy wrote:It really is about time that the 4NCL rate should be paid in full when booked and non-refundable to stop the wanton overbooking - we have several players without accomodation again so I will have to book twin rooms for the next 3 weekends with local Holiday Inns but best prices for them are non refundable so the total of 15 nights worth of twin room B&B commission will be lost to 4 NCL yet again - presume thats aroun £100 from my team alone - then lo and behold 20 spare rooms will appear when it is too late

The trouble is that if you do that, you'll run into the Law of Unintended Consequences. If bedroom bookings were non-refundable, nobody would ever book until their team was finalized, and the hotel would have no idea how many people were staying. This isn't exactly a good way for the system to work.

I will attempt to free rooms up as soon as I have confirmed the players and their accommodation requirements.

There might well be other teams in a similar situation.

Barcelo Daventry (20 miles away) will as usual offer rooms at 4NCL rates for those who want them. If I understand Kevin correctly, this may still work out cheaper than the Holiday Inn deals for people staying one night only, as the price is the same whether for one or two nights. But of course the Holiday Inn may well be closer geographically.

Regarding the Sunningdale weekend,

There are only the two divisions playing there this weekend, so theoretically there will be 256 players

With the venue having 272 rooms there should plenty of space available, though the hotel may have other guests there (so it may be less)

Why don't we have a system which says all the teams will be guaranteed a room for all 8 players in a team, I would expect that sometimes teams will prefer twin/double rooms and some players may commute, thus additional rooms will become available if teams require more than the 8 rooms (i.e. for a non playing captain or a ninth player)

At least with this method all teams will be at the venue and should stop this ongoing problem

Admittedly this method may struggle when you have all divisions at the same venue, Hinckley only has 362 rooms, but preference should still goto the 1st and 2nd divisions, and once again rooms are released when people don't require their full allocation of 8 rooms, so there should be enough to cover the majority of the 3rd Div

I'm not sure that would be particularly easy to do. Even if the venues knew which room bookers belonged to which team, they wouldn't be willing to put in place the admin procedures needed.

I did think that this would be a problem, but after thinking about it I shouldn't matter

Each team captain is the designated booking contact which is pre-arranged with the hotel and the 4NCL people (say yourself Mike for arguement sake), therefore as happens now, two weeks before the weekend said contact is ask for the names of the occupants for his 8 rooms, therefore individuals need not book for themselves as they will already be guaranteed a room

If teams require extra rooms then they are put on a waiting list, and these are given out when rooms are not taken from the original allocations

Yes I agree there needs to be a little cooperation between hotel, the league, and team captains, but it does seem to be a fairer option

You could argue that the 4NCL themselves block book the 256 rooms, and are released to the open public two weeks before play if captains don't register names with the 4NCL

Ok all you overbooked team managers !

I am still in dire need of rooms for Sunningdale (7 Singles or twins or doubles or any combo of them)

Beer to those assisting

Kev Mc
Pandora's (Living in Hope)

[email protected]
07778 155333

AMCA released 7 rooms at Sunningdale today.

We also released 9 rooms at Latimer Place today.

Hope that helps!

If anyone has a spare single room for Saturday 31st March at The Barcelo, Hinckley I would like to hear from them. I've contacted the hotel on several occasions and left my contact details but to no avail.

AMCA released two rooms from its booking of 26 2-3 weeks ago back to the Hotel.

John Upham wrote:AMCA released two rooms from its booking of 26 2-3 weeks ago back to the Hotel.

I now have a room thanks to the forum