Okay, if I may offer my 0.02... let's take a gazetteer or the Mad Maps or just plain a good map and draw two vertical lines, both running north to south. Those be the boundaries that for some reason, we want to inflict on ourselves. Next, let's spot the (say) 5 highest concentrations of good roads, per their path on that region on the map. Next, let's check that they actually have decent pavement for the most part and are not residential developments. That should give us some options.
As a side note, I do not know where the geographic restrictions East-West-Center came from. I know that for a real peachy riding location I would schlep hundreds, even over a thousand miles, whereas it will be a fight to drag me over to the next state if the roads suck. Doesn't matter where between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Once we have that (and if we don't then the geographic restrictions should become a mute point), then we can look for a hotel that has 80-90 rooms available, and that is surrounded by similar hotels who will be only too happy to compete among themselves for a share of the bounty. If we insist on finding one single property that can host all of us, we screw ourselves on a few counts:
1. Such properties are few and far between, and tend to be secluded resorts like we had this year.
2. Said resort has no immediate competitor for our business and will offer only lip service to price accommodations.
3. Once the deal is signed, they have no incentive whatsoever to go above and beyond by providing convenience services.
4. We end up not patronizing small, local businesses, but rather big foreign hedge funds who own the mega-hotel-resorts.
I would like to know how many actual rooms our group rented this year. We may find out that there was no need to be exiled in an empty Eagle's nest and that 400 rooms is a pie in the sky. Instead of coming up with eye-popping numbers to negotiate a symbolic rate drop, I think that realistic numbers combined with natural competition between close-by hotels will yield a better result for everyone.
Lastly, if I understand well the 2018 geographic restrictions, they would mean mainly 3 choices:
1. Ozarks
2. Wisconsin/UP
3. Texas if we bend the western line a bit.