This is a pretty complicated issue, and there are many ways to look
at it. Consider the following argument for the commercial boater
perspective:
The percentage of people who are capable of running their own trip
is miniscule compared to the much larger group who love the Canyon
but don't have the skills, time, or physical abilities to do their
own trip. The commercial boaters serve this much larger segment of
the population, and thus the much larger allocation of userdays is
justified.
For example, some commercial outfitters run special trips for the
disabled.
Another thing to consider is that there is a wide range of commercial
trip options, from 3-day cattle car and megaphone trips to more than
two week oar trips. It may be that the 3-day trips do serve the
useful function of giving lots of people a taste for the Canyon
(I wouldn't want to argue that case :-), but the longer commercial
oar trips are a lot closer to a private trip.
It does seem to me that the scheme for handling cancellations could
be vastly improved -- some variation on the auction idea seems like a
good start.
Also, I think that the idea of a new intermediate between commercial
trips and private trips is good -- a "paid freelance guide" trip,
sort of...
-- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html ==================================================================== To subscribe, send email to majordomo@songbird.com, with "subscribe gcboaters" as the only line in the message body. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe gcboaters". For further information send "info gcboaters", or see http://www.songbird.com/gcboaters ====================================================================