Hotel room booking - now open

27 April 2020

by The Chair Team

Booking temporarily closed

Dear members - our sincere apologies. The Hilton website has changed without our knowledge, leaving us with no choice but to close booking for now. If you purchased a room at a price that was *not* £68, or £80 including breakfast, please contact hotel@dwcon.org immediately to have this rectified. Once again, we are sorry for this inconvenience.

As we mentioned in our last update, the fate of the Convention is still in flux. We would greatly appreciate it if those of you that can book rooms do so, as it will help us out a lot. However, as we mentioned previously - these are difficult times, and we really do appreciate that it may simply not be possible for some of you.

Some of you may already be speaking with our Hotel and Accessibility teams about your rooms, and may have already paid your deposit. You can safely ignore the rest of this message, but should you run into any difficulties or have questions over how to proceed, to avoid confusion please contact us directly rather than going via the Hilton website. When you do, please ensure you include the badge numbers of everybody involved so we're all on the same page.

Let's get down to the details:

How to book

  1. Gather your payment card details.
  2. Find the link to the hotel booking section of the website in your email. If you didn't get an email, contact us and give us your badge number(s).
  3. Follow the steps on the website.
  4. Then follow the (correct) elegant and finely-crafted link from there to the Hilton website's DWCon event page. Please note that once said link is clicked, it will not indicate whether breakfast is included or not - so please be careful to select the right link.
  5. Click 'BOOK NOW'.
  6. All basic convention rooms are charged at £68 a night, regardless of occupancy. Breakfast is optional and is £12 per person, per night but must be booked in advance. These rates ONLY apply from Thursday 6 August to Tuesday 11 August. If you attempt to book dates outside this range, the Hilton website will throw a wobbly. So even if you wish to stay on different dates, please keep your initial booking in that range.
    Note: The Hilton website is a standard hotel booking system, and handles unavailable room options by giving them a ridiculous price like £999. It's not a bug (it's a feature)! The booking page will also show standard rates for parking, WiFi and pets, but the Convention have negotiated special reduced rates so please ignore these.
  7. You will need to pay a deposit to the Hilton of the first night's costs. This is fully refundable up until at least 9 July 2020 (the Hilton's own rules may change this, depending on how the lockdown situation evolves, but the deadline for a full refund will never be earlier than this date).
  8. Once you have booked, you will get a confirmation email from the Hilton with a reference number. You must quote this and your badge number if you need to contact us or the Hilton about your booking. If you want to extend your stay beyond the Convention dates or would like to upgrade your room beyond the basic level please book your room as above and then check the website for further details on how to proceed.
  9. If you run into any problems, first check the troubleshooting guide on the website, and if that doesn't help, email hotel@dwcon.org for assistance.

Once again, we thank you for your support in this difficult situation.



The Chair Team