Jul 01
This will be the holding space for the Hotel list for Paddy’s Valley. Someone needs to take ownership of compiling the hotel list. Create the list however you want and point us to it and we’ll link to it from here. Please include location, price per night and whether the hotel has Wifi and if free or not. Thanks.
July 2nd, 2007 at 4:12 pm
As in my previous post, Personality Hotels of union Square are good – 7 different types of “boutique” hotels – decent rates and free WiFi…http://www.personalityhotels.com/
July 3rd, 2007 at 2:17 pm
From Adam Green (in Boston) via email:
I saw on the Paddy’s Valley site that you are considering using several hotels. I think that unless you have a very large number of people you should get everyone to stay in the same location. This will facilitate after hours conversations. If you have the hotel reserve a block of rooms, you can get a better rate, and you can also get them to give you a function room for meeting in the evening. Even better would be to get two function rooms. One could be for the open bar and food, and the other could be for demos. Then you can let your people present demos for the people who come to visit your gathering.
So the daytime could be for going out to see people and companies, and the evening could be for inviting people back to the hotel to hang out and get demos. If all of your people took the $50 they would spend for a dinner and drinks at a restaurant one night, and put it
into paying for food and drinks, you could pay for a party easily. I managed to run a party for Mashup Camp for about 60 people for under $1,000.
There are a number of big hotels in the Mountain View area, but I think you should also consider a smaller place that we used for the first Mashup Camp. It is called the Avante and it is in a very convenient location on El Camino, which is the main street of the alley.
http://www.jdvhotels.com/avante/
They were very friendly and helpful. The best part is that they gave us two function rooms and let us bring in our own food and drinks at
no extra charge. That is extremely rare, and a huge savings. Normally you are never allowed to bring in outside food or booze into a hotel
event, and even if they let you bring in liquor they insist on charging some type of “uncorking fee” for each bottle. The Avante
didn’t have any extra fees. They have a breakfast room that they gave us that held about 30-40 people and allowed us to set up our own beer and wine bar and buffet. They have a separate Board Room where we gave demos that held about 15 people. There are lots of restaurants in the area that will deliver, so putting together a spread with pizza, and other finger food is easy. There is also a Costco nearby, which is this amazing American store with HUGE quantities of food and beverages at a low price. If you can guarantee 25-30 rooms, you should be able to make a deal with them for the two rooms I described.
Our contact at the Avante was Jeanine Conforti, jconforti@jdvhospitality.
July 3rd, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Follow up information from Adam which looks at it from the other side and agrees with Shane’s point of view -
“The only negative with an SF hotel is that it will cost more than the Valley, but people will be able to go out at night to lots of great restaurants and bars, and they won’t always be asking when the shuttle is coming. You can still do some type of hospitality suite at the hotel one or two nights and
invite people in, but it will cost more, so you’ll need sponsors. On the other hand, picking a Valley hotel has a greater chance of
pissing people off if they can’t go out as easily at night. Either way you will still need to shuttle people back and forth from SF to the Valley in the daytime, but that will be the same for both locations.
So my vote is SF this time, and then hold out the option of a Valley location next time.”
July 4th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Via Karlin Lillington:
My mom came back to me on hotels for your US trip — She says the
Creekside Inn is nice and rang them for you but they wouldn’t give
her a group rate on the phone without details. She also says the
Sheraton does group rates. Here’s her message to me with phone
numbers so maybe someone wants to try these two?
>
Those would probably be modest rates as opposed to expensive or
cheap. My brother has also stayed at a cheapie motel called the
Mermaid — I think it is on El Camino.I jhave a query out to someone
on a number of things and hopefully he will reply before too long.
If you guys want a Valley focused experience I;’d stay down there and
not SDF as otherwise it will end up being a trip to SF with a few
side trips to the Valley.
July 5th, 2007 at 9:59 am
I would actually separate time in SFO and in the Valley. Biggest requirement of course being the free wifi ;o)
Make a list of where you wanna go and what would be a good spot to use in between. Depending on what you want to do – there are some nice hotels in that area but make sure to not pay too low. I find if you pay not enought then you actually have a problem with it really being too cheap
(.
When in Sfo, I usually stay at the Holiday Inn at Market street which has a regular rate cancable (if you book early enough) for 109 Euro. It has free internet, and if you are priority club member also free breakfast. It is directly at the Bart station.
Though you should get a taxi in the evening, I find it highly convinient and they should be able to accomodate a larger group easily. I also stayed at the other HI at Van Ness, which is a bit nicer, but already more expensive. I t is my believe that if I only need a bed, I do not really need to spend a lot of money on hotel.
In Palo Alto I stayed at a very nice hotel with shared facility once for a whopping 55 dollar a night for a single called Cardinal Hotel – they are a bit more expensiv, but could be a good deal. No free wifi except in some rooms from the nearby british pub, but next to it is the gorgeous coupa coffee which has free wifi.
Around South San Fran Airport there is a selection of 4 hotels (one HI. free wifi, one HI express with free wifi and a free business center, one Best Western and a Starwood free wifi) which are convinient to the airport with a shuttle as well as in part with free parking, direct access to the interstate. I found that to be highly convinient and prices run depending on how far you book, but i was able to make something in the 100$ range for a single again.
I have not seen it, but I know both HI and Starwood should have some kind of meeting facility. hth
Nicole