I know that's how the conferences work. But I'm fortunate enough to have two factors working in my favor - One hotel is just the pits and has the T/A reviews to show for it. However, they tend to attract conferences where people will pay a little more for a better room (like medical continuing education conferences, for example).
Second, there is a conference center downtown that tends to attract larger gatherings that cater to women (arts and crafts, Mary Kay, stuff like that) and the hotel attached to the conference center only has 299 rooms that usually get filled up with the vendors first. Women like B&B's in safe areas, with free parking and a lot of other amenities included that they don't have to worry about.
I have several room nights already filled in April with nearby conference attendees. I also had 9 room nights last spring from a music conference where a downtown hotel had overbooked..
