I am from hays for the people that are saying state should be in hays I dont think Hays has enough lodging for a state tournament yet. We are slowly getting new hotels but i dont think there would be enough.

Where do you live nix? I drove from Topeka to Wakeeney & back last night after state. Took 7 hours round trip. That was around 500 miles total. I did think about the district 4 folks & actually passed several on my way there.

I know that the hotel situation in Topeka was not good we had a family from our club who just wanted to come up to watch on saturday and sunday and there for only needed a room for saturday night. they called all around and they had to book a room in Lawrence! They were told at several hotels that the price would be 75-120 for each night for two nights or one night for 150-240. They all said that they had to rent the room for both nights or nothing even if you didn't stay. There were also no cancelations even in case of emergency after monday. Also everyone had to prepay by cash on monday at the hotel where we stayed and then every person had to have a creditcard on file with enough credit to cover the cost of the room even though we had already paid cash. I had to beg them to put my parents room on my card because they said they only wanted one room per card incase of excessive damages. WE are grown ups come on. Also I have stayed at this hotel on other occations and I have never had to prepay and was always allowed to reserve the room and hold it with a credit card (2 rooms). They are taking advantage of wrestling families and it is sick. And yes they had a sign outfront that said welcome wrestlers. Also we had a single dad in our club who doesn't have a credit card and had paid the cash and they did not want to let him rent without the credit card. We had to use someone elses card and it had to be a different card then they had rented thier room with! I don't care where state is held, it is the same drive for me! I just want somewhere that will appriciate our business not do whatever they want just becuase they know that we will still stay because we have no choice.

Several people have made mention of having to pay for rooms with cash. In all my years of traveling around the U.S. I have never had to pay for a room in cash. What am I missing here? Why the cash requirement?

I had the EXACT same experience at the airport hotel in Tulsa back in November. I was not happy, disagreed with the policy, was made ware of the policy in the lobby of the hotel! What I'm saying is this is not a Topeka thing.

Our team has stayed at the same hotel for the past 4 years and have never had this problem until this year. They also made us overnite them a check and would not let us even pay with our club debit card. There were no cancellations no matter what after Monday the 24th and everyone still had to present a credit card at check in. I asked why the policy change since we had never had to do that before and of course no one had an answer. Some of our parents would have gone home on Saturday when their kids got beat out but had to pay for the room anyway so ended up staying. There was also a large group having a conference at the same time we were there all weekend long and I really wanted to ask if the hotel stuck them with the same policy. Wichita would be about 2 hours closer for us and we have family in that area so of course we are excited at the possibility of state being moved there but I have to wonder if the hotels there would also slowly start to enforce the same kind of policies?

Firstly, thank you all for being in Topeka last weekend. On behalf of my company, that operates the H.I. Express, Holidome and Ramada, and my colleagues with the Topeka Lodging Association I would like to let you know that we really appreciate you being in our city.

I certainly can't explain or defend any specific hotel policy or practice other than my own, but I thought it might help for everyone to understand some of the challenges the hotels face. First let me say that no hotel stays in business by having policies that anger customers. That is really a losing situation. We really all desire to provide good lodging accomodations and friendly service at a fair price for the market and demand. Here are some things that happen on our side that have created the policies that different hotels put in place.

1) Every wrestler in the state with any hope of making the state tournament calls & makes reservations for rooms starting a full year in advance.

2) Some teams even reserve blocks at separate hotels. Because we operate 3 hotels in the city, we found that 4 teams had blocks at two different hotels this year. One team that held 10 rooms at each of 2 properties actually used 3 rooms this past weekend. Before we discovered the double booking, we had held 20 rooms and turned literally hundreds of callers away saying we were full.

3) Hotels don't get paid for empty rooms, so over the past several years of hosting this tournament we have been "trained" to overbook and wait & see how many cancellations come on the Monday after qualifying. One of my hotels was overbooked by 75 rooms 30 days in advance and ended up with 5 rooms available last Thursday night. The overbooking was completely by accident as a staff member hadn't entered all of our contracts into the computer, but none the less, it worked out in the end. Every hotel maintains a history of what happened last year and have learned approximately how many rooms they can overbook each year based on the history.

3) Once a hotel becomes "full" hundreds of reservations calls are told that the hotel is full. Many of the wreslters scramble to find rooms in Lawrence or in hotels that they wouldn't normally select. They even are forced to accept one of the 2 or 3 properties in the city that drastically raise their rates on high demand times. I haven't done an official survey of all the properties in Topeka, but I would guess that this tournament requires about 3,000 out of the approximately 3,500 rooms in Topeka.

4) Once hotels become full, we start turning away business. We hold rooms for families & fans and tell others that we don't have a room for them. Neither the hotels OR the wrestlers know who is going to win or lose on Saturday. It's no fun, but some people lose. They would like to not have to pay for Saturday night, but the hotels have turned away literally hundreds of other potential customers because we had a reservation for that person. I think that this is what has created the 2 night minimum stay at many hotels.

5) One nice thing about credit cards is that they aren't guaranteed payment. If you get charged for something you don't like, you call your credit card company and tell them that you didn't authorize the charge or get the item that you were charged for. The reason for the cash / check payment is linked to the situation above. If your son loses on Saturday and you would rather go home on Saturday, you go home. It feels bad enough to lose and have to go home, but to have a hotel take your money for a Saturday night stay as a result of a policy you didn't like in the first place just makes it all worse. When your credit card bill comes, you write them a nice letter that disputes the charge and most of the time, you win. This THE primary reason behind cash payment. It really has nothing to do with the extra 2.49% credit card fees that we pay on 99% of the rooms rented all year long.


I apologize that this is so lengthy. My sole purpose in drafting this long explanation is so that some of you know that servicing your group is not without challenges. Challenges that aren't anyone's fault or responsibility and aren't specific to Topeka hosting the Tournament. Working through those challenges with you is quite worth it to us. This is evidenced by the fact that we continue to fight to retain your business in Topeka.

You are all absolutely correct that most of the policies that you find in effect in Topeka during wrestling weekend aren't in place the rest of the year in Topeka. I would guess that Wichita hotels are going to have the same experience that we have in Topeka and it won't take long for them to start with the same practices. These practices aren't something that we invented in Topeka, but common industry practices that occur when an event such as yours drives the demand for rooms. Many of your members have posted that they have experienced policies that they don't like as they travelled to other cities for other events.

I'm not sure how this email has come across to you, so I'll say again that it's purely explanatory. Some of reasons may seem reasonable, others may not. If nothing else, I felt that someone needed to provide some reason as many of the postings on this site simply wanted to know why.

Please call me if there is anything I can do for you on this matter or any other.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope to see you in Topeka for many years to come.

Bill Michaud
Director of Operations
Parrish Hotel Corp.
785.215.8242
bmichaud@parrishhotels.com