For travel convenience, I prefer to print posters near the conference location. How can I efficiently look for the best poster printing price near a conference location?
(In my experience, conference organizers sometime point to a printing business, but they typically tend to be not price optimized, far from it)
First off, avoid the print shop at any conference location, which is quite likely to be both overbooked and expensive.
Second, make sure to send your poster far enough ahead of time to avoid a potential last-minute rush (particularly at large conferences).
Finally, you can use Internet map sites (Google Maps, Apple Maps, etc.) to search for copy shops near the conference location, and call to find out their rates.
Open Google Maps, and navigate to the desired location. Then choose "nearby." You can zoom in and pan around to make more options visible. You can glance at the review vote average, and click to see review contents.
This way of finding stores and service providers works better, for most things, than the regular google search, which has a primary focus on text.
If you are in the United States, phdposters.com has local pickup in Baltimore, Boston, Brooklyn, Denver, Durham, Richmond and San Francisco, usually in a university library. Their rates are also pretty reasonable.
