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As a student, I quite enjoyed going to conferences. My first was the Society of Canadian Ornithologists in 2005 in Halifax, a gathering of about 100 people from universities, government, and the private sector in one hotel conference room for 2 days. If memory serves, I think I paid $50 (or rather my supervisor did), and we all drove the 5 hours from Fredericton. I met lots of great folks there, and learned a lot.
But lately, I’ve become rather frustrated with conferences. It seems to me that conferences are increasingly becoming less about the science, and more about the conference. As someone who’s spent many years producing local theatrical productions, I recognize many of the same things: promotion, venue, sound/lights (AV equipment), catering, … all of which can be had on a sliding scale of cost, but which are increasingly costing more and more. And then there are the conference add-ons that really have little to do with the actual science: the often-accompanying tote bag/swag from various sponsors, and the bar service (often during the poster session evenings).
Now, some of these costs are imposed by the venue. If you want alcohol served, there’s usually a minimum purchase, and you’ll also pay for serving staff, for example. But there are some steps that people organizing conferences can take to reduce what is becoming a burdensome cost. Do we really need those posh biscuits at the 10am tea break? Swanky tapas during the poster session? I’d argue not.
Here’s a quick spin through some of the ornithological conferences just to see how much they currently cost (assuming early-bird registration for a non-student, and not counting travel & accommodation):
British Ornithologists Union 2016: £235 members / £440 non-members
American Ornithologists Union/Cooper Ornithological Society 2015: $320 USD members / $395 USD non-members
North American Ornithological Congress 2016: $499 USD
Pacific Seabird Group 2016: $285 USD / $330 USD
International Penguin Conference 2016: R4500 (roughly $300 USD)
And some general ecological ones thrown in to boot:
Ecological Society of America 2016: $342 / $510
British Ecological Society 2015: £350
International Marine Conservation Congress (2014; 2016 price not yet posted): $462 / $624 USD
And again, this is exclusive of any travel, accommodations, or food. The PSG meeting, for example, is in Turtle Bay, Hawaii (an hour’s drive from Honolulu at a $300/night resort… though more ’affordable’ accommodation is likely to be found within 15-30 minutes’ drive).
Given that we’re often asked, as scientists, to show value for money, and budgets are ever shrinking (or at the best, not increasing, which is a decrease in real terms), we need to start asking whether it’s good value for money (often public grant money) to attend these expensive meetings. Sure, they’re fun, and a good chance to catch up with friends and colleagues, but is that enough for 1-4 days’ of listening to others talk about their research? Or at best, spend 15 minutes talking about some recent work of our own?
Yes, it costs money to run a conference. As a former producer, I’m only too aware of how much it costs to rent a venue, host a website (let alone one with online registration/payment), and coordinate a herd of cats group of scientists. But could we not all bring a brown-bag lunch one day? Plan meetings in more affordable cities near major airports? Forego the complementary drinks at the bar?
While most conferences offer a discount for students, the number doing so for postdocs or scientists who haven’t been visited by the magical funding fairy is much lower. To say nothing of scientists who spend money from their own pocket to go these shindigs.
There are of course also the ethical arguments about the potentially large carbon footprint of flying all over the place (and as an aside, we also have a carbon budget here at the RSPB).
I’m not arguing that we do away with conferences. I think they provide valuable time to interact with colleagues, network, and I very much enjoy attending them. But we need to make scientific conferences more affordable, or worth the ever-increasing prices.
The Lab and Field 
And the costs you list are quite low compared to those in other fields! Completely agree that conference costs have gone way over the top! Few, these days, consider using less-expensive venues such as universities (in the Summer), preferring expensive hotels downtown.
I’ve gotten to attend a small state conference (as an undergrad), which was a great opportunity to meet other scientists. I also got to see a talk given by a grad student whom I’d worked for, which was a great chance to see how research is translated from the general findings (which I knew) to a talk for people who didn’t know anything about it.
Luckily, my branch of the Wildlife Society paid most of my way, so the cost wasn’t a huge factor. I would love to attend more, but conferences are rarely easily accessible to undergraduates, which is a shame, since it’s a great way to see what science is like out there in the ‘real world’.
I really worry about conference costs, too. Part of the cause is size. We had a conference for the Society for Systematic Biologists in 2015 that had a meeting cap of 300 participants and a registration cost of $95. It was small enough to host at U. Michigan and have very few (usually no) parallel sessions. Rooms were available at like $38 per night (and up). There were also a few workshops there that had funds to pay for participants; I’d estimate 20-30 people received grants from those projects (thanks, NSF!). For coffee, people could just go to the Starbucks where the meeting was held, rather than have that cost wrapped into their registration (and so people could just forgo coffee to save money).
Once a conference gets bigger, like the 2000+ person Evolution conference, a lot of those things no longer work, despite the best intentions of organizers. It’s increasingly hard to find hosting at a university for that many people (people try, every year) so it means that you have to use a convention center. You either have 200+ people showing up simultaneously at the nearest coffee shop at breaks, or you provide (bad) coffee and wrap the cost into registration. Rather than relying on a couple of organizers’ laptops you have to rent 15 laptops and projectors. Etc. But it would be nice to make “extras” (drink tickets, tote bags, etc.) opt in and keep the base rate as low as possible.
One solution is more, smaller conferences. By the time there are 12 parallel sessions, it’s more like separate conferences: you might hop between two, maybe three sessions, but the remaining nine could be in a different city without affecting you at all (they don’t provide a bigger audience for your talk, either). There is more scope for interactions in a bigger conference, but it has a cost. If we do want large conferences, it seems important to host them in cities that have cheap airfare and hotels, maybe at the cost of hosting them in rather depressing cities (i.e., Vegas). Fun, unusual locales are nice, but if you’re actually at the conference, you’re talking to people in a windowless room for hours: it doesn’t matter much whether the view outside that room is beautiful mountains, a beach, or a parking lot. In some ways, there’d be more interactions if everyone were in the same cheap Ramada in a dull city rather than a fun place where folks might be tempted to take off for a day or two to see the sights. The problem with that is that especially senior people might not be as drawn to go at all.