What do we want in a conference venue?

The APS March Meeting was in Las Vegas this year, and I have yet to talk to a single attendee who liked that decision in hindsight.  In brief, the conference venue seemed about 10% too small (severe crowding issues in hallways between sessions); while the APS deal on hotels was pretty good, they should have prominently warned people that not using the APS housing portal means you fall prey to Las Vegas’s marketing schtick of quoting a low room rate but hiding large “resort fees”; with the exception of In N Out Burger, the food was very overpriced (e.g. $12 for a coffee and a muffin in the Starbucks in my hotel); and indoor spaces in town generally smelled like stale cigarettes, ineffective carpet cleaner, and desperation.

I don’t think it’s that hard to enumerate what most people would like out of a conference venue, if we are intending to have in-person meetings and are going to spend grant money and valuable time to attend the meeting with our groups. (I’m taking as a given that the March meeting is large - now up to 12K attendees, for good or ill - and I know that’s so big that some people will decide that it’s too unwieldy to be worth going.  Likewise, I know that the logistics are always difficult in terms of the abstract sorting and trying to make sure that likely-popular sessions get higher capacity rooms.)

Off the top of my head, I would like:

• A meeting venue that can accommodate everyone without feeling dangerously crowded at high volume transit times between sessions, with a good selection of hotels nearby that don’t have crazy room rates.  (I know that the meeting growth already likely rules out a lot of places that have hosted the March meeting in the past.)
• A high density of relatively cheap restaurants, including sandwich places, close to the venue for lunch, so that a quick bite is possible without hiking a mile or being forced to spend $20 on convention center food.
• Actual places to sit (tables and chairs) to talk with fellow attendees.  Las Vegas had a much smaller number of these (indoors) than previous locations.
• Reasonable availability of water (much better these days than in the past) and not-outrageously-priced coffee and tea.
• Wifi that actually can accommodate the number of attendees; at some point in Las Vegas I basically gave up on the conference wifi and tethered to my phone.  Remember, many of us still have to get some level of work done (like submitting annoyingly timed proposals) while at these.
• Modern levels of accommodations for nursing mothers, childcare, facilities for those with disabilities or mobility issues, etc. 

Are there major items that I’m missing?  Do readers have suggestions for meeting sites that can hit all of these?  I am well aware that the APS is financially constrained to make these arrangements years in advance.  It can’t hurt to discuss this, though, especially raising concerns about problems to avoid.