As AirBNB and similar app-based booking services have become more popular over the years, we've seen a noticeable drop in attendees of WACV, CVPR and ICCV booking rooms at conference hotels where we have designated room blocks. This has caused two problems for our conferences that the community should be aware of.

The first problem is the attrition fees charged by hotels when we don't fill our room blocks. When this happens, the conference is forced to pay a substantial amount of money to cover the vacant rooms. This can cause a conference to end up as a financial loss (meaning the financial sponsors have to cover the deficit), which is something we have been very good at avoiding in the past, but no longer. There is a simple solution to this problem: we can cut back on the number of conference hotels and rooms in the blocks we do have. Future meetings have already moved in that direction in order to mitigate the risk.

However, that solution has created a second, perhaps not as obvious problem, in that it limits our ability to put conferences in desirable cities. When we seek proposals from potential venues, there is an expectation that we will bring a significant amount of business to local hotels, *not AirBNB*. Thus we have been turned down from a number of excellent cities because we cannot guarantee an adequate number of hotel bookings.

We are not the only community facing this problem. Other major CS conferences are experiencing this problem. Clever solutions have yet to emerge. That leaves us with the option to address this within conference budgets by building in money to cover attrition fees, meaning we'll have less capacity for student travel support and reduced student pricing, as well as higher registration fees. Further, because of venue constraints, we're looking at reduced offerings for workshops, catering breaks, etc. coming from space issues at non-ideal convention centers.

So, if you'd like to help out the PAMI TC conference you are attending, consider booking a room through the conference website. Our meeting planners are working hard to identify convenient, affordable and quality options for you. Otherwise, we may be stuck with some unattractive conference venues and reduced programming very soon...