Yep, nothing in there I would particularly disagree with. Well, maybe the 'post S11' slant - the climb in venue costs had already started before then, its continued on the same trajectory, and it seems to be largely driven by commercial convention business, and possibly just generally good economic times. And I haven't really noticed any big rise in air fares, though I have noticed some Americans being rather more painful to deal with (wanting their stopover flights routed away from certain countries, etc).

But most of your financials seem spot on. In particular, I agree that there is a painful step around 250+ at which hotels costs tend to rise dramatically, which is where Swancon and most other large Aussie lit/general SF cons have been for a while - just in the opposite of the sweet spot, the painful hard to deal with spot.