Frequently Asked Questions

1. I can't afford to go to Eurofurence. Why is EF so expensive?
2. You must be earning a lot of money. Where does all the money go?
3. Why is the price going up every year?
 4. Why does the location change each year?
 5. Why is the location almost always in Germany?
 6. Why do your mailings often have a German translation attached, but not one in my language?
 7. Why didn't you choose a better date for Eurofurence?
8. Why do I have to be at least 18 years old to attend Eurofurence?
 9. Why are there no dogs allowed?
 10. You said there are no dogs allowed, but I saw at least one dog at the Convention!
 11. Is there a connection between Eurofurence and MMC?
 12. I won't need my own bed / I will bring my own food / I just want to come for one evening. Can I get a discount?


 1. I can't afford to go to Eurofurence. Why is EF so expensive?

Actually, we think that Eurofurence is pretty cheap, if you keep in mind what you get for the money.

Let's compare Eurofurence to the big American conventions. At first glance, Eurofurence looks expensive with its >100€ price tag, while a full membership costs approximately $45 at Further Confusion, or $35 at Anthrocon.

If you judge it by that, Eurofurence seems very expensive. But, let's take accomodation and food into account. A double bed room at the Further Confusion hotel will cost you $90 a night. If you stuff it with four people, that's $22 per person per night. Food will weigh in at least another $15 per day, if you are extremely economical, usually it's more like $20.

(And if you are an artist or a dealer, additional costs for a dealer's table or artshow panel space apply ... at Eurofurence, both is free.)

So, adding up the costs, e.g. for Further Confusion, makes $45+$66+$60=$171. Comparing this with our price, we think that the pricing for Eurofurence is pretty reasonable.


2. You must be earning a lot of money. Where does all the money go?

All "profit" is spent on the operation of the convention, except for a very small sum that is used to pre-finance the startup of the next convention. Nobody involved privately makes any profit from Eurofurence. In fact, being part of the EF team usually means putting lots of private money into it.

Here's where the money goes:
  • 65% - Function Space, Accomodation, Food
  • 10% - General Expenses (Insurance, Transportation, Medical Staff, Net Access, etc...)
  • 7% - Stage Equipment, Video Show, Decoration
  • 6% - Shirts & Other Merchandise
  • 5% - Guests of Honour
  • 4% - Con Books & Badges
  • 3% - Art Show
Additionally, it's the "Eurofurence e.V." who runs the Convention, an incorporated legal entity, and all the funds belongs to this legal entity, and not to any single person. Furthermore, the statutes explicitly state, that profits are not the organisations main goal. Usually, at the end of the year, our account balance is zero.


3. Why is the price going up every year?

There are three main reasons:
  • Eurofurence is steadily growing, and it simply does not scale well. That means, the prices we pay for locations of our size do not rise proportionally to the number of people they can hold, but over- proportionally. A location holding two times as many people costs more than two times the money.
  • Overall costs are rising due to the current state of our economy. If everything gets more expensive, we have to compensate for that.
  • The more attendees we have, the more important becomes the programming of the convention. More events, and more sophisticated events cost more money.

4. Why does the location change each year?

Because we want to keep the price low. Youth hostels are package deals. They will only rent you the whole place if you actually pay for the whole place. Every single empty bed is a financial loss, rising the price for everyone else. So we have to find locations that match our size almost perfectly, leaving as few beds empty as possible. Unfortunately that means, there is little to no room for growth, and thus we have to change locations frequently.


5. Why is the location almost always in Germany?

It's the most pragmatic solution. The majority of the people involved in running Eurofurence are Germans. Because of that it's virtually impossible for us to find locations in other countries, especially in those whose language we don't speak. For locations outside Germany we are entirely dependent on other people's contributions ... and we don't get many of those. If we get them, we do carefully consider them.


6. Why do your mailings often have a German translation attached, but not one in my language?

Adding a German text is close to no extra effort for us, because it's the native language of most people involved in running Eurofurence. So we add the German text as a convenience. Providing more translations would be a huge effort for us, because not many of us speak any other languages at all, and consulting external translators first would cost us too much time, as most announcements are written and published on short notice.


7. Why didn't you choose a better date for Eurofurence? There are two reasons:
  • Because the dates largely depend on the availability of the considered location, which might be booked out years in advance. More often than not, our favourite location is just not available on our favourite weekend. To get good locations, we have to remain flexible.
  • Because it's very hard to decide what a "good" date is. It's impossible to find the one weekend that satisfies both students and employees, parents and singles, and that lies both in the summer holidays and semester holidays of all 25 States of the European Union, and preferably does not collide with any other conventions in the summer. There's just no way to make it right for everyone. It's a hard truth, and we have to live with it.
We first check out when our favourite location is available, and if we have more than one option (which we often do not), we try to pick a date that has the highest propability of sunny weather. That's why you'll propably never see a Eurofurence in September or June.


8. Why do I have to be at least 18 years old to attend Eurofurence?

Allowing minors means facing severe liability issues. Even if underage guests are accompanied by adults, Eurofurence can still be held liable, for example, if they sneak into the adult section of the art show, or if they drink, smoke, or maybe even end up in someone else's bed. It's a risk we do not want to take.

Additionally, our experiences during the time when minors were still allowed, have been very negative. Even though they were small in number, they caused us a large deal of trouble, and we came to the conclusion that the amount of effort needed to deal with them is just too high.


9. Why are there no dogs allowed?

Because the management of the youth hostel does not allow dogs.


10. You said there are no dogs allowed, but I saw at least one dog at the Convention!

That's because some managers might be willing to make exceptions for dogs of staff members (whom we personally know and for whom we personally vouch).


11. Is there a connection between Eurofurence and MMC?

The teams of Eurofurence and MMC are completely independent. However, there is a friendly cooperation between the two conventions.

For example, MMC and Eurofurence share their Artshow Panels. Also, Eurofurence shares some of its lighting and sound equipment with MMC. The statutes of the Eurofurence e.V. explicitly encourage that, because it's our belief that we're all in the same boat, and that conventions should have a friendly relationship, and not see each other as competition.

We are definitely not trying to "take over" other conventions, we're just being friendly and sharing our resources. We have no other influence whatsoever.

There are Eurofurence staff members, who are also members of the MMC staff, and we don't see anything wrong with that. They made this decision on their own will, and it's surely not our intention to tell them what they may do with their spare time, and in the end, both conventions will benefit from their extra experience.


12. I don't need my own bed / I will bring my own food / I just want to come for one evening. Can I get a discount?

Three questions, one explanation, because they're essentially just variations of the same issue. Of course, from a personal view, it would be nice to give more people the chance to come, by giving them a chance to save on resources they don't want or don't need.

However, we have to think economically to keep Eurofurence financially stable, and that means that our answer must be "No, we're sorry".

  • We must be able to estimate how many people will come to make the best possibe choice of location, and use of function space.
  • We must be able to estimate how much income we will have, or we won't be able to plan our budget.
  • If we allow restricted membership types, we'll have to enforce those restrictions, i.e. make sure that people who paid the "no food" tariff actually stay out of the dining rooms.
These three prerequisites lead to the reasons why it's not feasable for us to officially make an offer like, "Pay 80 Euros less for no-food-no-bed membership".

Point 1: Introducing new membership types that cost less, can cause us a siginficant loss, even if we just subtract the costs of accomodation and food from the membership fee, which sounds cost neutral at first. But since we're making a package deal with the con site, we'll have to pay for beds, even if we do not use them. That's why we provided the bed sharing option at EFX only after the house was booked full. Income would have been unpredictable otherwise. What if 50% had chosen the bed sharing option? You just can't predict it. And we need predictability.

Point 2: We choose our location based on the estimated number of attendees. If we think we'll get at least 350 people, we'll chose a location of the appropriate size. But it's unpredictable how much extra attendees special "no- sleep" memberships would attract. What if we need only beds for 200, but function space for 400? Who knows? In Nuremberg, we have beds for 380 people, and function space for about the same number of people. If we get 50 "no-sleep" members, we'll fill the function space, but end up with 50 empty beds we can't give to anyone else. Under the current membership model, we pretty much know what to expect. We'd lose this predictability if we change it.

Point 3: Offering no-sleep-no-food memberships is prone to abuse. How should we prevent anyone from booking no-sleep-no-food from taking the first unused bed, or swiping food? We'd have to give them extra badges, and actually place security in front of the dining rooms, and check people's rooms for "illegal imigrants". And if we can't enforce it, what would it be good for?

The examples are simplifies, but still, it all boils down to one bottom line: Youth hostels are package deals. Filling all beds we pay for is the way to make the con affordable to everyone. And unless we have way more function space than sleeping space, it makes no sense giving people discounts for not occupying a bed, because it would effectively make the whole thing more expensive for the rest, and that would be unfair.