cherrin

Anyone have experience with hotel block bookings?

Yoshi212

Yes.

Since Flyertalk requires a 5 character minimum for a posting I have attached this statement.

obscure2k

Welcome to Flyertalk cherrin. It would be helpful if you could describe what you are looking for.

Efrem

You don't have to be an expert to do this. Call a hotel you're interested in and ask for the sales department. Tell them what you want in terms of date(s) and number of rooms. Also tell them you've never done this before, so they'll have to be patient with you and explain the process a bit more than they would with an expert.

The most important things you want to know are (a) how much they'll charge per room and (b) when they'll release rooms that your group members haven't reserved yet. You can compare your group rate with the rates the hotel offers online for seniors, auto club members, government employees and so on. If you're not getting much of a discount, you can use that as a basis for negotiating.

If your group might also need function rooms and order food, be sure to mention that.

It's OK to compare several hotels. After the second one, you won't need the "I've never done this before" line.

Ocn Vw 1K

cherrin, welcome to FlyerTalk! One reason that we need more information to help answer your question is that there are often two key issues of hotel block bookings which arise: ones you wish to make with a hotel for a group which Efrem explained. Another which comes up is when an individual traveler finds that the desired hotel is sold out (or almost sold out) due to block bookings. So if you could give us more information of what aspect of block bookings you're interested in, and the property name/hotel chain, our members can be of more help. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator.

MSPeconomist

Sometimes a third issue arises when someone has a choice of whether to book a room through the block or not. In addition to comparing rates, one should check whether points and elite benefits, if applicable, have been excluded from the room block reservations.

cherrin

Specifically i am looking for services for large enterprise bookings or anyone that has experience with this and would like to chat for awhile. I just want t o know the process and how long it takes and how far in advance to book.

MSPeconomist

What's "large"? A couple hundred rooms in a single hotel or ten thousand rooms scattered among hotels in a large city?

cherrin

MSPeconomist a couple of hundred at the same hotel!

jrl767

Efrem summed up the process rather nicely

as with pretty much everything associated with large numbers of people at a single venue, the more notice you can provide the facility (and the more specific information ... "second week of October" as opposed to "this fall") the more usable information you will get in return

pinniped

Usually when an individual here asks questions about booking a block for personal events, we're talking 10 to 50 rooms for a wedding or whatnot. Sounds like this is well into the realm of "decent sized corporate event".

cherrin, do you have access to a professional event planner? Someone like that would already have relationships with the event/sales/catering managers at big hotels around town.

Often1

At that number, it is well worth hiring a professional. Asking someone on the other side of the deal who is likely either working on a commission or bonus structure, is not likely to yield the best deal.

It's not just the room rate, but everything from food & beverage to porterage, to parking, local transportation and other perks.

MaxBuck

This is definitely the way to go. They'll save you money in the long run, and they'll remove a lot of stress.

slawecki

spg has a separate group and separate rewards for people booking blocks of rooms. seemed like pure bribe money to me.

MSPeconomist

You have to pick a professional who can understand what your group wants. IME some of them are horrible this way. It's probably best to have as much as possible in house (so that you have meeting room costs, F&B spend, etc. all up for bid in a package with the hotel rooms, although depending on who is paying for the rooms, you might want to put the discount on room rates or not). Depending on the city, there might not be lots of choices of appropriately sized and well located hotels in the right tier that have several hundred rooms and other space available for your dates. IME one should avoid hotels that are much larger than your group.