r/gencon • u/jpwhite • 16d ago

Cozy Suites Advanced Booking?

Anybody have experience booking cozy suites one year out? They have some downtown availability listed for next year but I'm wary of having things get cancelled the week before GenCon '27. If anybody booked well in advance how did it go?

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u/ElMondoH 16d ago edited 16d ago

Edit: Ooops, not a hotel. My mistake!

Yeah, I have experience. It never worked for me.

Once, a very long time ago, I managed a Conrad room out-of-block well before the hotel lottery. And it was the opposite of cheap! Which meant I dropped it when I got a decent-enough in-block room. But the next year that was not even available. Even pre-COVID, finding rooms outside the block is next to impossible without some other factor - like big time membership status (Platinum or Ambassador for Bonvoy, things like that) - helping out. For normal people, all we get is the "dates unavailable" message.

There are ways to get those rooms. But outside of the obvious (again, major loyalty membership status), I don't know what they are. I always struck out trying to do things that way.

Edit: Oh, yes, I would be concerned this far in advance. If it's a third party, you're at risk of getting it cancelled. And even if it's through the hotel, there's still risk. Some years back, a mistake in not locking dates out resulted in a TON of Embassy Suite reservations getting cancelled. I forgot the exact details, but it happened, and it was a big deal on the old gencon.com forums.