thank you matador. luffs forever.

I would suggest that your friend NOT buy a ticket separately but instead go in on two tickets ($199 each if you get the early tickets) plus the $99 per night room with you. I am very hopeful that if you trust this person enough to share a room, the two of you can work out reimbursement.

GC

My question was this: How can I buy the following – 2 tickets for the festival, and 1 room at the Palms with the Matador discount. Will I have to buy 1 ticket at $199 to get the hotel room, then one ticket at $250 because that ticket doesn’t require a hotel room? If so, will the two prices of tickets be available in the same transaction? I can see this selling lightning fast and it would be a real bummer to come away with just 1 ticket.

So yeah – I want one hotel room and 2 tickets for an awesome vacation with awesome bands. Can it be done?

I take your main points and yes, while no hotel stay is required in order to attend Bonnaroo or Coachella, we think the environment in question is substantially different enough to justify what we’ve put in place. I do regret any inconvenience you or others have suffered by making early hotel reservations, but I would hope those advance bookings are refundable. No one was guaranteed a ticket back in April.

re : Pitchfork. I’m sorry, I should’ve said “print advertisement”.

Indeed, there’s been some contradictory information, but we’re attempting to put revised plans in place across multiple platforms. Hopefully sometime before Friday morning we’ll appear sufficiently organized. FINGERS X’D!

When can we expect further updates? I keep checking this thing every 5 minutes and it seems that you mostly handling damage control duties…

The anticipation for this Friday is making me feel ill.

Thanks for your help,

Thank you for your comments, they are truly appreciated.

When I said “destination festivals,” I was thinking of something like Lollapalooza or Pitchfork or Bonnaroo or Coachella, for which you just get a ticket, and then you can look for hotel deals or packages. Granted, those things don’t take place IN hotels like Matador 21 will, so it is true that your festival must be handled differently. My disappointment comes not with the prices, but with the lack of clarity on the requirements of ticket purchases vis-a-vis hotel bookings. In hindsight, of course it makes sense that an event in a hotel might require booking a room at that same hotel; it’s the lack of information on that in the earliest days of this festival’s marketing–not to mention the sometimes contradictory information that has appeared on Matablog and your Twitter feed–that has disappointed me and others.

As for my comment that Matador 21 is “taking the tone of an industry party,” I concede that my turn of phrase wasn’t accurate. Rather than taking the tone of an industry party, it has taken the tone of an exclusive event (which it is, yes) to which entrance is not as simple as it may have appeared to the general public when the thing was first announced. Now, what I mean here has nothing to do with easy, affordable access–it’s been clear from the beginning, to me at least, that only ~2,000 tickets would be available at a cost to be expected of such an event. I have no complaint about the cost, accessibility, or supply and demand. The only thing that has disappointed me, aside from the confusing flow of information, was the news that to attend the event a person must also book a Palms room, because I made housing accommodations before this detail was announced. Never before in my twenty years of attending music festivals has advance booking even been an issue. Now that you plan to release some tickets without the requirement of a Palms reservation, my primary complaint is assuaged. On Friday, I’ll find out if I’m one of the lucky ones.

(Incidentally, you mentioned that you’ve yet to place a single advertisement for the event, though there is currently a banner running on Pitchfork that has all of the signposts of an advert.)

Thanks again for taking the time to respond on this message board. I know all too well how frustrating it is to contend with a complaining public, and your patience and candor here is to be commended.

I do hope to make it to the shows this October, and look forward to having a great time.

Assuming I’m lucky enough to get tickets, is there any way I can keep my reservation at Palms Place, and not have to stay at the Palms proper, and we can just call it even, since it’s the same property? Heck, I might even be doing someone a favor, in case there’s a run on the 700 rooms at the Palms!

Otherwise, someone asked this above, yet I don’t think it’s been answered: Will upgrades at the Palms also be offered at a reduced rate?

Thanks!

I’m sorry this has been so tiresome for you, but I don’t think our policies and prices are totally different from other “destination festivals” (ATP certainly comes to mind). As far as the event “taking the tone of an industry party”, we’re attempting to sell about 90% of the tickets to a 2100 capacity venue to the general public. I don’t know how many industries parties you’ve been to that operate that way (admittedly, I don’t go to a lot of industry parties). I think the bigger frustration comes from simple supply and demand. We’ve touted a cool event and there’s angst over our inability to promise easy, affordable access to every person who wishes to attend. Yet if we didn’t trumpet said cool event, there’d be anxious moments over the public not receiving ample warning or even knowing about the show in the first place (you’ll note that we’ve yet to place a single advertisement for “The Lost Weekend”).

I hope you’ll try to attend and if successful in obtaining tickets, end up with a better feeling about the whole thing.