Hotel Information

Our ICA24 headquarters is the STAR Gold Coast, with multiple overflow blocks in other hotel brands (Sofitel and several condo properties TBA) within a 10-minute walk. Please be sure to wait for our hotel block to open in early March - do not book at an ICA hotel without going through our room block - typically they will turn you away because they barely have any inventory outside of what we have contracted, but if you do somehow do it (by getting an uninformed hotel reservation agent), you’ll pay more than double our negotiated rate AND your reservation won’t be protected by our contract. STUDENTS: Please note that we are working to establish a heavily discounted student housing block at a nearby hotel. More information will be posted here, on social media, and sent out to our student members via email once we have the information.

The room block will be handled the same as for ICA23 in Toronto. In recognition of the difficulties those in the global south experience in competing for rooms, we will now make the booking site link available in early March 2024 as follows:

• 31 January at 12:00 noon ICA Headquarters time is the registration deadline for being in the “early access” group for the hotel booking link
• 4 March the early-access link is sent to Tier B & C registrants who registered 31 January or earlier
• 5 March the early-access link is sent to Tier A folks who registered 31 January or earlier
• 6 March the password is removed and the link is released to the public

Contracting a hotel block serves four main purposes:

1. It proves to the hotel that everyone staying there is an ICA attendee, which means that we get credit for bringing in that revenue, which is turn garners us free meeting space (this saves ICA hundreds of thousands of dollars, which would otherwise be tacked onto the needed registration revenue, so this is one way we keep your registration fees reasonable).
2. It allows ICA to control how the hotel treats you as a guest. When the Hilton in DC tried to send our registered guests to another hotel upon check-in because Hilton had oversold their rooms, our executive director stood in the lobby and personally ensured that every single ICA attendee was given a room in the hotel…and that it was transient guests who were “walked” elsewhere.
3. As part of the contract, hotels sign a “lowest rate” clause, meaning that they cannot offer rooms at a lower rate than what we have negotiated, even to discount sites like Kayak or Travelocity (EXAMPLE: the same rooms we secured for ICA attendees in Paris at 229 Euros per night were 478 Euros for tourists). The room rate shown on the Sheraton Centre Toronto website for a week-long stay at the single occupancy rate was a whopping 615 CAD per night, whereas ICA’s contracted rate was 232 CAD per night. Even Expedia/Kayak were booking Sheraton at 526 CAD per night.
   This gives you, the attendee, peace of mind that when you book you are getting the lowest possible rate and you don’t have to go hunting on various websites to bargain hunt.
4. It allows us to guarantee that 90 to 95% of the rooms at the headquarters hotel are our attendees’ to book and won’t be taken up by transient travelers (tourists unaffiliated with ICA) before our attendees are ready to book.

• The hotels aren’t giving those sites their good inventory. These sites are where hotels offload their worst inventory: the room with the obstructed view, the room that hasn’t been renovated, the room near the loud ice machine that will wake you up at two in the morning. They take these undesirable rooms and sell them at a discounted rate (but still not as discounted as ICA’s contracted rate that gives you bulk pricing because of all your colleagues being in the same place at the same time!).
• They aren’t as cost effective. Even Expedia can’t get as low as ICA’s contracted rate because bringing in thousands of people at once gives us purchasing power. In rare situations where the Expedia or Travelocity rate IS lower, there’s always a reason: it’s a lesser room, it has a terrible view, the air conditioning is broken, the wifi isn’t included, or it has fewer amenities. Make sure when you are comparing room rates between outside sites and ICA’s block that you check whether those rates include things like breakfast, free wifi, taxes (both regular taxes and GST), and maid service. Hotels will not switch you to a better room upon arrival if you came in under one of those Expedia/Travelocity bookings because they sold those at a discount.

We recommend you use the ICA-contracted housing block for a few reasons:

• It’s safer. Every year, there are one or two attendees who have their Airbnb bookings canceled only a few days before arrival…or worse, they arrive only to find someone else already staying there, the door locked, or no running water (these are actual examples from past ICA conference attendees' Airbnb bookings). They then ask to be rescued and pulled into the hotel - but we often cannot do this as the hotel is sold out by then. Don’t let this happen to you! On another side of the “safety” issue, we’ve also had attendees be mugged or pickpocketed when off on their own down a dark residential street. Of course crime can happen anywhere, but all else being equal, staying in the headquarters hotel or within a few blocks of the main hotel at another contracted property is usually a safer bet in terms of walking home at night after receptions.
• It’s more flexible. In the event that we ever have to pivot quickly to virtual-only again like we did in 2020, you will be in good stead if you are in the ICA hotel room block, knowing that the hotel won’t even see your credit card information until we’ve given the go-ahead. In 2020, those who booked in the room block via the ICA portal didn’t have to lift a finger to cancel their room registrations - ICA simply purged all reservations in one action and no one paid any penalties. Those who had gone to an Airbnb, VRBO, or other properties outside the ICA blocks in 2020 were on their own, however, and many were unable to get refunds for weeklong stays. ICA has no standing with companies like Vrbo or Airbnb, so we can’t negotiate on your behalf to get you a refund.
• It helps keep conference prices lower. Booking within the block also supports ICA and your fellow attendees by helping keep registration prices low: if we start to bring fewer and fewer onsite sleeping room bookings to our hotels each year, hotels will start to give us fewer and fewer free meeting rooms (free meeting space is the perk we receive for guaranteeing hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of sleeping room revenue for the hotel), meaning we will have to start paying for meeting space, leading registration rates to increase. The ICA conference is typically a break-even event - we need those free meeting rooms to keep things affordable.

In Paris in 2022 we were the victims of the “perfect storm” confluence of ICA, the French Open, and the Champions League finals (football/soccer) over the same dates, meaning there was a huge demand for rooms, meaning that overflow hotels wouldn’t give us any rooms because they knew they could sell those rooms at four or five times the normal price to transient guests (i.e. football and tennis fans). In Toronto, the headquarters hotel did sell out fairly quickly, but we had rooms available in other properties we had blocked. This is an imperfect science - we have to estimate not only how many people will come in person to the conference, but how many of those won’t book at an Airbnb or stay with friends, and how many nights each person will stay. We base our estimates (which we have to make four to six years in advance) on past years’ performance and then we refine those numbers based on data from the previous year’s conference survey and then, submission numbers. The goal is to get it just right, because if we make a mistake and overestimate the number of rooms needed, we have to pay attrition fees in the tens of thousands for rooms we asked the hotel to set aside that then weren’t booked, but if we underestimate, we end up with people who have nowhere to stay. We do the best we can, and if things start to fill up, we are usually able to have a few contracts waiting in the wings to put into place to augment the block fairly quickly.

These heavily discounted rates negotiated by ICA for our attendees apply for three days before and after the event dates. We publish all rates (not just the single-occupancy rates) on the website, in recognition that universities look at the rates published online when determining what they will reimburse.

Star rate (headquarters hotel, rate includes GST, in-room basic wifi, and porterage):

• Standard room (“superior deluxe”), single/double occupancy: AUS $285 (at the time of this writing this is US $184 or 168 €)
• Corner king with balcony: AUS $360 (US $232 or 213 €)
• Executive Deluxe: AUS $535 (US $345 or 316€)

Sofitel rate (includes GST, in-room basic wifi, and porterage):

• Classic River View (king or two twins): AUS $299 (US $193 or 176 €)
• Superior Ocean View (king or two twins): AUS $359 (US $231 or 212 €)

Breakfast is not included in these room rates, but access to the hotels’ breakfast restaurant with a large international buffet can be added at the Star for AUS $38 (US $25 or 22 €) per person per day and at the Sofitel for AUS $30 (US $19, or 17€) per person per day. Both breakfasts are excellent, and both have western and Asian breakfast options, as well as amenities such as omelet stations and crepe stations.

Yes! We will add this information in detail once the contracts are fully worked out, but we will have suites with kitchens at both the Star (there is an additional tower of condo-type properties that was built since 2020, so we added rooms there) and at a few hotels across the street from the conference center. You will not be able to book these rooms until the housing block opens; the housing block will open on 4 March to pre-registered Tier B & C attendees, and on 5 March to pre-registered Tier A attendees. The link becomes public on 6 March.

Unfortunately, you can’t. These services typically charge a commission to the university on each sleeping room they book, which means they can’t go through our site (per their contract with the university, typically). Those required to use such services will not be able to access rooms with the heavily-discounted ICA rate. We recommend asking for an exception to the rule, if possible, which should save the university money (you can take screenshots of ICA’s rates and the rates at those same hotels if using their travel agency). Again, there is no way for these travel services to obtain a more affordable room rate in any hotel ICA is using than the rate in ICA’s block, because we have a lowest-rate clause in our contract with each hotel. We do this so that you can feel comfortable booking through us, knowing that you aren’t missing out on a better rate elsewhere, and so that we can reserve 90 to 95% of the hotel’s inventory just for our attendees so it’s waiting for you when you’re ready to book in March.