The good part of having the Congress in Leipzig was abundance of cheaper hotels. Hamburg is more expensive.
The on site food vendors were - universally - garbage.
The nearby options were also pretty bad.
You had to spend maybe 45 minutes commuting to get somewhere reasonable
https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/03/motel-one-says-ransomware-...
From another source (non-English) I get the data (5TB) is available on the darknet.
The boom is mostly driven by students and some economy settling due to the convenient transport location. Leipzig is located right at the intersection of two historic major European trade routes after all (via imperii and via regia) - which is, next long-tested fair infrastructure - also a reason why this place was quite a great choice for the Congress. Hamburg is much more cumbersome to reach and commute through.
Since it is mostly a middle-European event with climate-conscious attendees, most will arrive by train if using any sort of public transport. DBs connections to Hamburg, even from Berlin are abysmal if you compare to Leipzig.
Getting from Britain to mainland Europe by sea isn't cheap: ferries from Plymouth to Roscoff are usually over €200 each direction, no meal, no cabin, no car - one adult. And the ships are so massive that it cannot be for anything but artificial scarcity; I'd estimate you could fit about ten thousand people on one of their ships before it would begin to feel crowded.
An affordable ferry with a cabin would allow me to set off at noon, cross Britain from west to east, spend the night crossing the North Sea and arrive refreshed the next day in Bremen/Hamburg ready to use a Deutschlandticket or similar to continue by rail within Germany.
What I have chosen to do in the absence of such a service is purchase a €200 Interrail ticket for 4 days, reserve the Eurostar (Channel Tunnel) train for €60, and reserve an extra night at a hotel in Belgium for each direction. End result: a total of more than €500 and 36 hours travelling.
It's not easy being a climate-conscious traveller.
Maybe someone would like to build a climate-conscious travel search engine that includes all these routes.
- the distance from Berlin to Hamburg is 282km, there are 33 daily train connections, taking 1:44h or more
- the distance from Berlin to Leipzig is 148km, there are 27 daily train connections, taking 1:26h or more
The real question though is, why would you want to travel through Berlin under all circumstances ;)
Last time I checked any late evening connections Berlin - Hamburg were quite scarce. Maybe they upped it a bit then. Still, Hamburg being in the far north is not exactly great for travel.