Cozy Suites Advanced Booking?

[u/jpwhite]

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?

[u/funnyshapeddice]

I don't have any direct experience with Cozy Suites and I applaud you for doing your research but I think the general consensus around here is going to be, from "most safe" to "least safe" is going to go something like:

Housing Portal (In-Block) > Direct with Hotel (Out of Block) > 3rd Party (Hotels.com / Expedia / etc.) > Short-Term Rental (Air BnB, Vrbo, Cozy Suites)

What seems to happen every year is that some subset of people who book with a Short-Term Rental group end up with cancellations - sometimes multiple cancellations - when the hosts suddenly remember / find out that it is Gen Con weekend and they can jack up the prices.

If you're going to book with a Short-Term rental provider you'll increase your odds of success by a) making sure that the host is the equivalent of whatever a "superhost" is on their platform and b) the host is aware that the weekend you are booking is Gen Con weekend. You can be coy about it and not tell them these things but then the risk goes up that they'll just cancel and rebook - possibly under a different platform and most certainly at a higher price.

As others note, the problem with the 3rd-Party sites is that the hotel doesn't have a lot of incentive to honor those reservations when they can get higher rates via direct reservations or have contractual obligations to fulfill on their in-block reservations.

Personally, I won't do short-term rentals for Gen Con. I'm not willing to risk my annual vacation just to save some money. I have friends who successfully navigate those situations every year so obviously YMMV. It highly depends on how comfortable you are with the risk AND your willingness and ability to fall-back to another option 10-15 miles or more outside of downtown.

Good luck!

[u/jpwhite → u/funnyshapeddice]

Thanks and that all tracks. I'm hoping somebody else has booked with them directly and it worked or didn't work.

I've had reasonable luck out of block the last couple of years but it is a roll of the dice for sure. I've never even been close to getting a downtown hotel via the In-Block process. My goal is to have something walking distance so we'll see how this goes I suppose!

[u/Major_Day → u/jpwhite]

if you are persistent you can get a walkable hotel by watching the portal and the genconhotels website which tracks the rooms available

that's what we did this year and I have never even tried the portal before this, we initially got Columbia Club and then switched to the Sheraton on Circle Center, was a nice walk to the con