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How to Block Rooms
In the old days hotels wouldn’t penalise companies if they didn’t manage to fill their booked room block. However, these days are now over and you could be stung with heavy penalties if you don’t manage to fill the percentage of rooms agreed in your contract. Because of this, it’s important to estimate as accurately as possible the number of rooms you will require.
Use Last Year’s Figures
First of all, you should study last year’s figures. If you are having the annual four-day conference, you should look and see which night was busiest last year. Set that as your peak – at 100 percent. Then you can look at the other three nights and what percentage of this total they are. Now it should be possible to calculate approximate figures for each night of the conference this year.
Often, hotels have a limit of, for example, a block of 500 rooms that can be pre-booked. Baring this in mind, if you are expecting over one thousand delegates on the busiest night but the hotel can only ever allow a block booking to this maximum of 500, then you should book all 500 rooms. And then, if on the final night you are only expecting 50 percent of the peak night (that is, 500 delegates remaining), then you should only pre-book 250 rooms: 50 percent of the 500 maximum.
Working in this way covers your back and makes it much less likely that you will over book rooms and have a nasty shock after the meeting. Reviewing your percentages each year is important too – as you can see which ways the trends are going.
Use Last Year’s Figures
First of all, you should study last year’s figures. If you are having the annual four-day conference, you should look and see which night was busiest last year. Set that as your peak – at 100 percent. Then you can look at the other three nights and what percentage of this total they are. Now it should be possible to calculate approximate figures for each night of the conference this year.
Often, hotels have a limit of, for example, a block of 500 rooms that can be pre-booked. Baring this in mind, if you are expecting over one thousand delegates on the busiest night but the hotel can only ever allow a block booking to this maximum of 500, then you should book all 500 rooms. And then, if on the final night you are only expecting 50 percent of the peak night (that is, 500 delegates remaining), then you should only pre-book 250 rooms: 50 percent of the 500 maximum.
Working in this way covers your back and makes it much less likely that you will over book rooms and have a nasty shock after the meeting. Reviewing your percentages each year is important too – as you can see which ways the trends are going.
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