The PG hotel trap

Good luck figuring out a work around.  I've always thought PG's single pool play game per day deal was highway robbery with regard to costs.  It's not just the hotel costs, but the food and everything else that you burn through when you have all that extra time on your hands.  Brilliant, but awful business model.  But hey, it's about seeing that joy on the kids' faces, right?

Most hotels will let you cancel the next day if you let them know by 11.

I always booked through Expedia and never used the PG hotels.

Another nice option, if you can find it is AirBnB or VRBO and get a house, with a kitchen, washer/dryer, etc. You won't be able to cancel early, unless you pre-arrange that day to day for playoffs, with the host, but a nice non-hotel option and depending on the party size you might get a few families and a pool.

We are looking at the hotel vs VRBO option. I prefer going VRBO, but hotel may give us flexibility to change dates. I think the biggest piece to the puzzle is getting there and getting back based on which team my son gets on. I It's a 12 hour drive for us. So throw on an additional 2-3 hours for food and rest stops. So probably spread that out over 2 days. So we would have to have two days on either side of which ever days/team he gets put on. So really it makes flying more efficient. But then probably difficult to reschedule flights 3 days in advance when the teams are announced. So unless you have your own private plane, it really feels like you are stuck having to be there the entire time. Would be nice if they would announce the teams a month before the event so that you could make necessary travel arrangements.

Depending on the Host, it can be done. But the day to day extension and not knowing is annoying.

Yes, I know all about travel 12+hrs. But depending on the length of the trip, makes sense to bring your own car to be flexible and mobile, not be in a rental and feel more like home in your own car. I would also carry a lot of the team bags in my suburban or YukonXL to the tourneys so people didn't have to pay the baggage fees on the way out (since the bags didn't stink as bad as on the way back. LOL).

Quick trips in/out. SIXT is a fun car rental for higher end cars cheap or as cheap as regular cars elsewhere. Just might be a little offsite.

Had some bad experience with Wilson Premier in AZ when they decided to move our hotel, without notice or asking. That wasn't cool as we picked the hotel for the tournament for a reason and location to food, etc.

Teaming up with other families in a VRBO or AirBnB is kind fund and like tailgating in a house

My experience with VRBO for many years with baseball, East Cobb included, was I would pay for a week which saved money, but I usually left a day early.  Yes, it had a kitchen, but still ate out a lot.  At his college tournament in Charleston, SC, when son's team was eliminated, I refused to leave early from our lovely VRBO.....Charleston is such a nice town, so we just hung around and played tourist.  BUT, with pro ball, you never know when or where you player will be so I find hotels MUCH more convenient to cancel and  change.   I will not stay in a VRBO for baseball now due to the inflexibility and the additional fees.   If you stay with several families and make it a vacation, that is different.

Get a hotel credit card and rack up some points.

Play hotel roulette on hotels.com.

^^^ Yes.  You can do several bookings on different days on hotels.com and you only have to cancel the day before.

I used Priceline...and only booked the days we knew for sure we would be there.  Can always pick up an extra day....if you're willing to check out of one hotel then check into another later in the day.  Pricelining at 4pm for a hotel that same night got us some $40 stays over the years.   Not as convenient, but if you don't have a lot of people and a load of bags it's not bad

Son’s travel team primarily did the Atlanta (we were metro Atlanta team)PG tourneys and always got to host as our home field was part of the field network. While we didn’t play much at LP which was awesome at the time, we always knew our travel time etc. some parents wanted to play at LP and our field would get beat up pretty good at the end of summer but we never had to experience the hotel shuffle.

@DanJ posted:

Good luck figuring out a work around.  I've always thought PG's single pool play game per day deal was highway robbery with regard to costs.  It's not just the hotel costs, but the food and everything else that you burn through when you have all that extra time on your hands.  Brilliant, but awful business model.  But hey, it's about seeing that joy on the kids' faces, right?

We are experiencing this now with PG tournaments in our area. We are in a tournament that started on Thursday. One game Thursday, one game Friday, one game Saturday, tournament play started on Sunday, semi finals and championship on Monday. Over the past several days I have heard from other coaches, parents, umpires, and even the tournament scorekeeper on how ridiculous a 5 day tournament was. The scorekeeper even admitted its so that the local director and facility can collect more money on entrance fees. I imagine their are also some "official" hotels for out of town teams that are also benefiting from it.

The first time we went we obeyed the hotel rules and suffered the consequences (overpriced and inconvenient).  After that we completely ignored them, stayed where we wanted and never heard a peep.

My kid played a PG regional tourney at a local field with a condemned portable toilet...the horror, the horror. The backstop fence has no overhang so every foul ball was ready to dent or smash a windshield in the cars on that lot. There was no way I was paying to enter that FEMA declared disaster area. I watched from my car and luckily there was a supermarket chain nearby that had a clean restroom. 

We never used the PG hotels and never had an issue and we went to quite a few showcases, invitationals and tournaments.

I told the travel organization my son plays for we'd be booking our own hotels for any travel. I did say that if the team as a whole was ever penalized we'd chip in to pay the fee to opt out (this is/was buried in PG's fine print). This would still be cheaper than using the PG hotels.

For years I've always used to points rewards cards to pay for baseball related expenses, and using the rewards for hotels (usually the best return). In GA points at various Hyatt properties will usually go far.

In 2017 I was the hotel rep for our 16U team.  I learned a lot.  Some tournaments did actually call me if they couldn't find our team in their hotels, I had to go through the roster, person by person, and explain who was staying with family, who was camping, etc.

I was told by PG that they had a certain number of rooms each team had to book in their official hotels, equivalent to the roster/4+1.  So, a roster of 20 would have to have 6 official rooms.  We hit that number; the people using points, booking on their own, etc. were covered by those paying the inflated official rates.  It wasn't fun to have to coordinate.

I did a lot of checking; at most tournaments, the official rates were actually a better deal than what you could get online, but at PG, they were higher.

Most big 5-day tournaments are fully using all their fields from 8 am to 10 pm (and then there's rain).  I don't know how you could build a schedule any other way than 1 game/day.  If you put teams 2 games/per day, would you only use local teams the first 2 days?  I'm sure local teams would rather play non-local competition.  Would you have long-distance teams sit idle for 2 days on Friday-Saturday?

There shouldn’t be idle time at these events.

I would prefer a hit list of Universities to drive through. Big, Small, City, Country.

Go to the field on Campus and have Joey knock on the Office door.

He met coaches, summer school players and was able to walk in the stands at some schools.

IF your at these tourneys for wins and losses, you’ve missed the best opportunity to get some real intel.

In addition, some schools have a camp during that same period and even 1 day at a camp could garner interest. ( “hey coach, I have a game at a local HS if you want to see me in a game”).

Finally, there are recruiters all over the place. Where your uni and greet them. They can tell a ball player when they see one, so why not show them one.

Basically, why go to a job fair and not speak to employers? I could never figure why travel coaches tell players not to bother the coaches.

Baseball is an individual recruited sport. GO GET YO JOB

@anotherparent posted:

Most big 5-day tournaments are fully using all their fields from 8 am to 10 pm (and then there's rain).  I don't know how you could build a schedule any other way than 1 game/day.  If you put teams 2 games/per day, would you only use local teams the first 2 days?  I'm sure local teams would rather play non-local competition.  Would you have long-distance teams sit idle for 2 days on Friday-Saturday?

This. Easy recent example is PBR NPI this month. Rain doesn't impact LakePoint, but lightning does. So with only lightning delays, they had games starting at 11:30 PM or later two nights in a row. We had one last year that ended at 1:30 AM. That's just brutal on the players, the umps, and the officials.

Only way to have shorter tourneys oftentimes is either more fields (which is a finite resource) or smaller fields. Both = less profit.

@Senna posted:

Only way to have shorter tourneys oftentimes is either more fields (which is a finite resource) or smaller fields. Both = less profit.

How about fewer teams? I realize that equals less profit as well - but it is an option.

We got called out by PG for not having a room. We had previously booked a lake house, the 4 of us booked a room at hotel, canceled after one night and everyone was happy. Never saw the place. I think we paid 35 bucks each to get them off our back.

the lake house with 4 families was awesome

@BaseballBUDDY posted:

There shouldn’t be idle time at these events.

I would prefer a hit list of Universities to drive through. Big, Small, City, Country.

Go to the field on Campus and have Joey knock on the Office door.

He met coaches, summer school players and was able to walk in the stands at some schools.

IF your at these tourneys for wins and losses, you’ve missed the best opportunity to get some real intel.

In addition, some schools have a camp during that same period and even 1 day at a camp could garner interest. ( “hey coach, I have a game at a local HS if you want to see me in a game”).

Finally, there are recruiters all over the place. Where your uni and greet them. They can tell a ball player when they see one, so why not show them one.

Basically, why go to a job fair and not speak to employers? I could never figure why travel coaches tell players not to bother the coaches.

Baseball is an individual recruited sport. GO GET YO JOB

It's the coaches job to meet the player and has to make sure he adheres to division recruiting rules.

Travel coaches are right, don't bother the coaches. Same applies to parents. 

TPM,

Players and Parents are not barred from speaking to College Coaches.

College Coaches cannot make contact during certain periods.

I’ve encouraged players to speak directly to coaches and it has never been a problem or a breach of the rules.

I always encourage staying within the lines and taking advantage of direct opportunities.

@BaseballBUDDY posted:

TPM,

Players and Parents are not barred from speaking to College Coaches.

College Coaches cannot make contact during certain periods.

I’ve encouraged players to speak directly to coaches and it has never been a problem or a breach of the rules.

I always encourage staying within the lines and taking advantage of direct opportunities.

Travel coaches should go over the do and not do regarding approaching D1,2,3 coaches.

Are you a coach?

JMO

@TPM posted:

Travel coaches should go over the do and not do regarding approaching D1,2,3 coaches.

@TPM

Can you share what those do's and dont's might be? Is there a consensus amongst travel ball coaches what items are on those lists?

@johnlanza posted:

@TPM

Can you share what those do's and dont's might be? Is there a consensus amongst travel ball coaches what items are on those lists?

Again......Ask the coach.

@johnlanza posted:

How about fewer teams? I realize that equals less profit as well - but it is an option.

Apologies, that's what I meant when I said "smaller fields". Shouldn't have used "fields" twice when I was referencing two different meanings of it.

@Senna posted:

Apologies, that's what I meant when I said "smaller fields". Shouldn't have used "fields" twice when I was referencing two different meanings of it.

Apologies from me - I should have understood what you meant.
My kids remind me from time to time - "Context clues, Dad.  Context clues."