Hotel Room Blocks for Your Special Event: What You Need to Know!

Most special events, whether it’s a wedding or any other type of event, will typically get a room block at a hotel where the event is being held or close by the event venue. I have found over the years that the process of getting hotel room blocks tends to be one of the most confusing and misunderstood processes in event planning. Let’s talk today about some common misconceptions when booking hotel room blocks.

Courtesy vs. Contracted Blocks

First of all, let’s make sure you understand the difference between the two types of hotel room blocks: Courtesy and Contract. A Courtesy Room Block means that a block of rooms is being held for you with no financial obligation to you as the client. If all the rooms don’t book, you don’t owe any money. Not all hotels will offer Courtesy Room Blocks, but typically three and four-star hotels will allow this. Many five-star, and even some four-star hotels, do not.

Courtesy Room Blocks typically max at 10 to 20 rooms, and if you go over that, there is often a chance that you do have to switch to a Contracted Block. The good thing about a Courtesy Block is that there’s no financial obligation. The bad thing about a Courtesy Block is that, about a month before your event, all of those rooms get released back into the property’s inventory and, after that there’s a chance the rooms aren’t available. A Contracted Block guarantees your rooms for a longer period of time closer to the event typically and also does come with a financial obligation, meaning that you are going to be responsible for making sure that a certain percentage of your rooms book. That percentage is known as Attrition. It is typically 80 to 90% of the total amount of rooms that you’re reserving. So, let’s say for sake of argument you wanted 10 rooms for an event, and you had an 80% attrition rate. You have to make sure that 8 out of 10 of those rooms book or you have to pay for the difference.

It’s not something that needs to be super scary. Typically, whenever we have a Contracted Room Block, if our clients need like 30 rooms, we usually will start off by guaranteeing 15 or 20 and then hopefully add more if we need to if the block fills. You can always max the rooms from the beginning that you think you might need, but, of course, if those rooms don’t fill, you do run the risk of falling into Attrition. Many hotels only allow Contracted Room Blocks, so you don’t have a choice and this is the way you have to go.

A common misconception is that, if your room block fills, that you will be able to add additional rooms for the same price. You will be allowed to add additional rooms as long as additional rooms are still available. When you are making a block, you are only guaranteeing that many rooms for that amount of time, and the hotel is not holding anything additional for you. So when you go back to them and ask for more rooms, they can add more, but sometimes the rate is now higher because, when you ask for more rooms depending on how far the gap in time is between when you booked and when you’re asking for more, the hotel’s revenue may have changed. There may be some new event in the city that’s increasing rates. Whatever the case may be, there could be a reason that the rate is higher. Sometimes the rate’s higher just as kind of like a punishment for not booking more rooms in the first place. They’ll not say that to you, but that is the truth. So, you’re not necessarily guaranteed the same rate when you go back later and add more rooms.

A Block Doesn’t Guarantee Lowest Rate

A second misconception is that getting a hotel room block always gets you the best possible rate you could find anywhere for hotel rooms. This is not true. A hotel room block guarantees that you will have the rooms that you need at a locked-in rate for a specific amount of time depending on whether you did a courtesy block or a contracted block. Your hotel also sold a bunch of rooms to sites like Expedia, Orbits, and those third party providers are allowed to charge whatever they want, after they’ve bought the rooms from the hotel. So, it’s not uncommon, for example, for you to have a $220 per night room rate in your block, and then someone goes on Expedia and books the room for $210. Your hotel is not going to go then and lower your block rate. Typically, again, the purpose of the block is for you to be able to guarantee those rooms and also, as the client, it gives you the ability to see the names of the people who are staying at the hotel if they registered in your block. You can’t just call a hotel and say, “Can you tell me if John Smith made a reservation?” That’s not a secure way for them to handle things. So, they can only provide you with the names of those folks that are in your block, which is helpful for you when you’re doing things like providing gift bags or providing transportation for your guests.

Your Block is Not That Big

A third misconception is that what you might see as a big block of rooms that should gain you concessions, freebies from the hotel, etc. is usually a very small room block to the hotel. It usually takes at least 50 rooms per night to be booked to get any concession from a hotel. Although 20-30 rooms seems like a lot of rooms, for a typical hotel that’s a very small sale, and they’re not going to give you any additional freebies, free nights, free breakfast, or free parking unless you have a very large block. I’ve had blocks before where we had 1,000 rooms at a hotel, and we still got very few concessions. It depends on the size of the hotel, how big their typical sales are that time of the year, and how much revenue they’re currently projecting for the week of your event.

No Notifications from Hotel

Fourth misconception, and this is a big one, is that the hotel will notify you when your block is close to filling or fills. They will not at all. Sometimes if we’ve rented out like the entire hotel for like a corporate event, we can set up a weekly check-in with them where they will let us know, but for a typical wedding room block, no one is going to notify you. The person that’s going to notify you is your guest who tries to make a reservation. There are no rooms available and they say, “Hey, what’s up? There’s no rooms available.” And that’s how you find out that your room block has been filled. So, do not expect proactive contact from your hotel. You have to check in with them.

Contacting the Hotel

Another misconception is that every possible way you could contact the hotel is going to have all the accurate information about the room block. For example, if you’re staying at a Marriott property and you send your guests a link that was created for your room block, that is really the best way to secure that room in the block. It is not uncommon for your guests to call Marriott International or national reservations, and maybe that system has record of this block but maybe they don’t. A lot of times they don’t. It is much better to be contacting the hotel directly via the link or via the local phone number, not just international or national reservations lines.

Shoulder Dates

Another misconception is that the dates surrounding your room block. Let’s say you made a reservation in your room block for Friday and Saturday for your guests. Some hotels will also guarantee what we call Shoulder Dates, which are the dates like two to three days before your block and after your block and will give you the same rate, but a lot of them don’t. You’ll have a booking link for your guests, and it’ll say, “This is for Friday and Saturday.” Guests will call, they’ll say they want a room for Wednesday, and the hotel says, “We don’t have that rate for that day.” Guests get so confused because that’s the date, and that’s the hotel number you gave them. But you have to know what dates this rate applies to. If you don’t have something in your agreement that says it includes shoulder dates, it doesn’t. And then your guests are not going to get the same rate for staying on different days.

No Double Reservations, Please.

Along those same lines, please do not encourage your guests to make a double reservation. For example, they want to start staying at the hotel on Wednesday and the room block doesn’t start till Friday. But instead of contacting the hotel and seeing what rate they can get for all four days on one reservation, they make a reservation for Wednesday and Thursday and then another one for Friday and Saturday. This is very problematic for a hotel. It does not guarantee that you are going to stay in the same room the entire time, and it typically causes a lot of confusion. If you know you have guests that need additional dates, instead of booking two reservations, contact the hotel and see what can be done about the rate to keep one consistent reservation the entire time.

Your Hotel Salesperson May Change

There is a very high chance that the person you are working with at the hotel to book your room block will not be the same person who is still in charge of this room block when it is time for your event weekend. As I’ve mentioned before, hotels have very high turnover rates, a lot of lateral movement, a lot of upward movement. Plus, this is a very stressful industry. It is not big is not a big deal if your hotel person changes to a different person. It doesn’t mean everything’s going to fall apart, but try to have realistic expectations that the person you start with is very likely not going to be the person that you end with. Regardless, that doesn’t mean that’s going to make everything a huge problem. It should still be fine.

Hotel Has the Ability to “Walk” You Elsewhere

Last misconception is a very little-known fact about hotels that is in the very fine print of any room block agreement that you have. And that is, technically, almost every hotel has the ability to what they call “walk” you out of the hotel – basically kick your group out of the hotel if a bigger and more important sale comes along. I know that sounds really harsh and really crazy, but let me give you an example that happened recently. If your hotel has a contract with a group, for example there’s a hotel here in Dallas that has the contract with the NBA and all of the traveling teams when they come to Dallas to play the Mavericks stay at this hotel. That is number one, their top priority of a contract of a group. So, what happens if you have an event that weekend at your the hotel? And what happens if they oversell the hotel? Just like a flight can be oversold and the airline offers you tickets to go take a later flight, to change your flight, all of that. Hotels have the ability to do the same thing. They have the ability to oversell. They often do. Why? Because people cancel just like they do on flights. In those situations, they are going to analyze who is booked at this hotel and who is the lowest sale and lowest priority to move to another hotel. They will move you there. They’re not going to just be like, “You’re on your butt. You have to go figure it out on your own.” They will move you to another hotel. But, in the example I just gave you, the NBA is going to have the first priority. After that, say there’s an event in the hotel that weekend, like there’s a wedding at a hotel that also has a room block. And then there’s a room block for another wedding where the wedding is not at the property, but the room block is there. In order of importance, NBA is staying first, the group with the event on property and the room block is next in line to stay, and the group with just the room block and no event there is last in line. That’s going to be the first group to get walked. This doesn’t happen very often, but it is very frustrating when it does and people get very angry about it. It’s understandable. It’s happened to me as a guest. It’s happened to me also with clients before, and it’s very hard to make them understand this policy. The best comparison I can give you is how much it is like airlines whenever you’ve been in that situation. It is solvable. The hotel puts you typically somewhere very close. They will often even arrange for transportation if you make a big enough stink about it. But it is something that is allowed, and it is in the fine print of all of your contracts. Hopefully, you won’t be in a situation when it happens, but it does happen.

Hotel room blocks are a great thing. They’re very helpful for events. They get your guests all staying in the same place, and it allows us to know who is staying there. It allows us to make a lot of plans much easier. But there’s a lot to know about them, and the best way to understand your hotel room block is to have an Event Planner who really understands this process and it can help you get the best rate and sometimes a commissionable rate, especially if it’s a corporate event, as the event planner has the ability to get room block commissions. But they will work with the hotels to get you the best deal and show you what this process is like. Just know there are a lot of things that you think you know about this that actually are not reality of how it goes with hotels.