[Coral-List] ICRS Registration Fee

[Stephen Ban]

I'd just like to point out that the exchange rate hypothesis may be a bit of
red herring; presumably, registration fees were set by the organizers to
cover the actual costs of hosting the conference (less sponsorship and other
sources of revenue). As such, budgets - at least as far as major conference
costs such as venue fees - would have been in Australian dollars.

That being said, Dr. Gast's comparison of the registration fees for ICRS11
vs ICRS12 was predicated on comparing exchange rates in June 2008 to current
exchange rates; while the Aussie dollar was strong in 2008, it was quite
weak in 2009 (as Jason Krumholz pointed out earlier). If sponsor revenue
was estimated based on exchange rates from this period, the recent rise in
the Aussie dollar would have led to a revenue shortfall and thus may explain
the need for higher registration fees. Of course, I don't actually know when
the registration fees were finalized, so this is conjecture on my part.

Stephen

Stephen Ban, M.Sc., Dipl. Tech.
Ph.D. Candidate
Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
James Cook University
Townsville, Queensland 4811 Australia
Phone: +61 7 4781 6063
Fax: +61 7 4781 6722
stephen.ban at my.jcu.edu.au