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