Why do witnesses HAVE to use only hotels on the list for the conventions?

truthseeker

Does anyone know the answer to this?

A while back I read that the Society gets free rooms for its convention speakers if they agree to fill so many rooms in a hotel with dubs, but is there anything more involved?

mmm, I don't remember ever hearing that but I did for a while work in the hotel service and at some places they could for sure get a price deduction. It wouldn't have anything to do with them being JW....just a matter of time of year.

iiz2cool

It makes it easier to spy on individual JWs during conventions when they're all using the same hotels.

gaiagirl

As I used to understand, the Society would attempt to negotiate cheaper rooms for those attending by guaranteeing hotel management that the hotel would be filled to capacity during the convention. Families who stayed at hotels which had not 'cooperated' by granting lower rates were seen as 'undermining' their efforts. I suppose if families paid less for hotel rooms, they had more left over to 'contribute'.

FairMind

Remember the slogan ?United We Stand, Divided We Fall?? This is most likely the WTS? viewpoint with regard to why JWs should only use the accommodations on the approved list. A united group has greater bargaining leverage for not only prices but for getting the hotels/motels to ensure that a specific number of rooms will be available for those attending the convention or assembly. Of course an individual JW can stay wherever they please but this weakens the WTS? bargaining position, thus JWs are strongly urged to use only the accommodations on the list. It is all about doing things in a businesslike cost-efficient way.

FM

Englishman

Wow. A hotel full of dubbies. Yuk.

Do they still open up all the bars?

Englishman.

JustTickledPink

Yes, if your group fills up a hotel than you can get cheaper rates... But it really is YOUR money, you should be able to do anything you darn well please!

garybuss

What about the rooming work we used to do before Watch Tower Publishing Corporation sponsored conventions? The mass produced pulp religious literature was forgotten and all efforts were redirected to the securing of rental rooms in private homes.

I did that rooming work. I secured rooms for families with children with people who were strangers to me and I never checked them out. I wouldn't know how. I could have been securing rooms in a criminal's house, I wouldn't know it. This seems like a reckless and dangerous practice now looking back on it.

Usually I phoned ahead for hotel rooms but once when I was first married, we went to the convention rooming desk and were given an address to a private home in the oldest part of town, and the rates were cheap so off we went.

The place was a pit. We went back to the rooming desk but all the other cheap rooms were gone and we stayed. The floor creaked like a haunted house. The owner was an old old man who was wearing three shirts and a jacket in the middle of July. He smelled like kerosene and coughed continuously the whole time we were there.

The bed must have been 100 years old and had a no springs sag in the middle. There were bust balls under the bed the size of basketballs. We laid the mattress on the floor but it didn't help. We didn't sleep. I laid there thinking if I could get ahold of the Witness who booked this room I'd make him eat this mattress. End night one of two.

jimbob

Do they still open up all the bars?

Since the one vice all witnesses have is drinking, I'd say they stay open all night long.

Doubtfully Yours

A business is a business is a business. The WTBTS is a religious business.

DY