BayCon

Hotel

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BayCon 2023 Hotel Announcement

Dear BayCon Members, Guests, and Staff,

We’re pleased to announce that we have signed a three-year agreement with the Santa Clara Marriott for BayCon 2023, 2024, and 2025!  We’re excited to be working with Santa Clara and their beautiful and spacious convention facility, which has plenty of space to accommodate larger events!

Photo of the Santa Clara Marriott entrance
Santa Clara Marriott

This year, due to a previously-scheduled event at the hotel on Friday, we need to move the dates ahead by one day, meaning BayCon 2023 will be taking place from Saturday, 1 July to Tuesday, 4 July, which allows us to take advantage of the fireworks show at California’s Great America on the last night!  

The Santa Clara Marriott is located at 2700 Mission College Blvd, Santa Clara, CA 95054. It is within easy walking distance of light rail, and a short car/shuttle ride from the San Jose airport. 

Due to the date change, Sarah Gailey will not be able to join us as Toastmaster. We are negotiating a replacement and will make an exciting announcement in the near future.

We realize that the change of venue and dates may be challenging for some. If you find that you are unable to attend the convention, BayCon is pleased to roll over your full attending weekend membership to 2024. As stated in our policy, we are unfortunately not able to offer refunds for your memberships at this time.

Because we have agreed on three years at this venue, we will be back to a Friday – Sunday event in 2024 and 2025.

Reserve a Room at BayCon 2023

If you have additional questions, please do not hesitate to email info@baycon.org. For registration-specific questions, please send email to reg@baycon.org 

Sincerely,

Chris Castro
Convention Chair, BayCon 2023: A Night at the Space Opera

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BayCon 2022 Hotel Block is Now Open

We are happy to announce that hotel reservations for BayCon 2022 are now live!
The hotel is located at 1770 S Amphlett Blvd, San Mateo, CA 94402.

BayCon 2022’s group rate is $140/night for a King room, $165/night for a Double-Queen.

Note: If you have trouble getting some dates reserved, book what you can and email us to let us know what to fix.

Parking at the hotel is free. Valet parking is available upon request.

Reserve Your BayCon 2022 Hotel Room

An Appeal to Our BayCon Family

It’s been nearly three years since our last BayCon. During that time we’ve seen a lot of fan conventions and fannish organizations struggle to support themselves and some disappear entirely.

There are a lot of invisible costs to keeping an organization afloat when it relies almost entirely on membership costs to generate any income. We have managed to stretch our budget and survive, but if 2022 does not hit minimum targets, then this may very well be the last BayCon, at least in its current form.

Here are some things you can do to help support the convention and ensure that there is a BayCon 2023 and beyond:

  • Purchase a membership to BayCon 2022! This is the most vital thing you can do for us. It’s how we get the majority of our income. Plus we would love to see you after so many years apart!
  • Stay at the Hotel during the convention. Believe it or not, this is almost as important to us as selling memberships. Our agreement with the hotel gets much easier if we make our target number of room reservations. We realize that the cost associated with staying at the hotel is prohibitive to some of our members, but if you are in the position where you can decide to attend in this way, we would greatly appreciate it!
  • Purchase your pre-BayCon 2022 swag to help us spread the word! You can visit our shop on Redbubble for some pre-convention merchandise. And yes, we will have official BayCon 2022 Member T-Shirts and other merchandise available for sale closer to the convention.

We hope to see you in person for BayCon 2022!

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BayCon 2020 Rescheduled to 2021

In light of the continuing risk to health and safety presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the BayCon Board of Directors has made the difficult decision to postpone BayCon 2020 to 2021. This decision was not made lightly. Along with our colleagues at other local events scheduled for the fall, as it is very unlikely that the State of California or the Bay Area will relax restrictions on gatherings in time, it does not make sense for us to proceed with our plans for November.

BayCon 2021 will be held over Memorial Day Weekend, May 28 – 31. We will again be hosting the convention at the San Mateo Marriott and will have the same special room rates for members staying with us. Room reservations for 2020 have been canceled. New reservations under the BayCon rate will be made available as soon as possible. We invite you to subscribe to our website and social media accounts for updates as well as news and other pertinent information as it becomes available.

If you purchased a membership for 2020 you do not need to take any action–you already have a membership for 2021! For any questions or concerns about your membership, please contact reg@baycon.org. 

We’re pleased to announce that our Artist and Community Guests of Honor from 2020, as well as our Toastmaster, will be joining us in 2021!  Please look forward to meeting Galen Dara (Artist), Jean Batt (Community GoH), and Dan Toole next year!

Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts, Cory Doctorow (Writer Guest of Honor) is unable to join us for BayCon 2021, much to our mutual regret. Cory will be contributing content for our next virtual mini-con event, coming up on the weekend of November 6-8, so we hope you will look forward to that!

BayCon is currently in discussions with a potential new Guest of Honor and will be making the announcement soon.

BayCon was looking forward to hosting the 2020 STARFLEET International Conference this year. However, they opted to hold a virtual event last month in lieu of a physical event due to the aforementioned concerns with the pandemic.  As STARFLEET selects their conference sites on an annual basis, this unfortunately means that we must regretfully announce that the 2021 STARFLEET International Conference will not be hosted by BayCon. If you have any further questions or concerns regarding the STARFLEET International Conference, please contact the STARFLEET IC Committee directly at ic@sfi.org.

We are extremely grateful for the patience and understanding from our community of members, guests, and staff. We literally cannot put on this event from year to year without your continued support. We are always open to feedback or questions that you may have regarding BayCon. Please contact us through our website at WWW.BAYCON.ORG or our social media (Twitter/IG: @BayConNews and facebook.com/BayConNews). And stay tuned for mini-con details and more to come from BayCon 2021!

Sincerely,

Artistic Solutions, Inc. Board of Directors

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Con Suite: Let BayCon Host Your Room Party

Traveling from out of town and don’t want the logistical hassle of planning a party? BayCon’s Con Suite is offering a new service called Party In A Box! Book a 3-4 hour sponsorship slot in our Con Suite (other time blocks will be considered on a case-by-case basis). Send or bring us your materials and we will put out flyers and swag, hang posters, and put up decorations. Prominent signs will be displayed to indicate your sponsorship and we will happily host your representative so they can spend the time chatting with our attendees about your event or group while our staff handles the rest. Several pre-planned themes are available or we will work with you on a custom event of your design.

Some examples are:

Tea Party
Book Launch
Fan Meetup
Cookie Party
Chocolate Party

Hot & Cold food options are available. Reserve early for prime time slots. The last day to reserve is April 1st, 2020.

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BayCon Hotel Update

We have an important announcement regarding making reservations at the Marriott.

We are aware that some of you may have trouble booking a room when the reservation includes shoulder nights (specifically Thursday May 21 and Monday May 25). Please go ahead and make your room reservation at the convention rate for whichever nights you can get. After you receive a confirmation from the hotel, please send an email to hotel@baycon.org with your name, confirmation #, and desired check-in/check-out dates.

We will work with the hotel to fix this for you, and once your reservation is fixed you will receive an email from us regarding the correction. Thank you for your patience. We want to sell the hotel room reservation just as much as you want to make it!

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BayCon 2019 Hotel Room Block Now Open!

We are pleased to announce that hotel room reservations BayCon 2019 are now open! BayCon returns this year to the San Mateo Marriott San Francisco Airport, at the intersection of Hwy 101 and 92.

REGISTER ONLINE HERE

(link updated 11.11.18)

BayCon 2019’s group rate is $139/night for a King room, $149/night for a Double-Queen. A limited number of King suites are also available at $169/night, subject to availability.

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