In order to determine whether attendance at food and beverage functions will be high, you need to analyze all historical data available and current conditions thoroughly and competently.

The historical analysis usually involves examining of:

• Patterns of pre-registrations
• Number of attendees broken down by category
• Percentage of attendees at a particular meal function to the total number of attendees
• Patterns of arrivals/departures
• Local ticket sales
• Number of no-shows
• Number of cancellations
• Guarantees
• Excess over guarantees

The analysis of current conditions involves taking the following factors into consideration:

• Location: Attendance at food and beverage functions is likely to be high if the property is in an isolated location for the simple reason that guests have nowhere to go. If, on the other hand, the property is in a lively area, guests are more likely to go out for shopping, dinner, and sightseeing and pick up something to eat at the food court instead of attending the lunch. Therefore, if the location is lively, you should give guests only an hour for lunch. This way they may not leave the area since there is not enough time for eating and shopping.
• Additional Attendees: Don’t forget to consider some extra people that may show up such as spouses, exhibitors, entertainers, speakers and staff. Usually spouses are invited to certain meals such as the opening reception and the final-night meal. Exhibitors are also invited to certain meals but they may not attend if the meal is at a time that is not convenient for them.
• Attendance of Locals: High local attendance usually means low attendance at meal functions. Locals may not attend breakfast or evening functions because they would rather be home.
• Changes in Programming: You need to go through all program changes from year to year in order to determine if a change will affect the attendance at a function. If, for example, you have scheduled a competing activity between 12 and 2 you should expect that attendance at lunch won’t be very high.
• Schedule: Keep in mind that if guests need to stay up late at a reception or a party they may not attend breakfast the next day. Also, if lunch is scheduled late in the afternoon at a resort destination, guests are more likely to opt for golf instead.

One important thing you need to know is that once you’ve given your guarantees to the hotel they can never be decreased but they can certainly be increased (always within a reasonable period) since this means more money for the hotel. If you have to give guarantees for more than one day, a smart thing to do would be to wait to see the attendance at the previous day’s function before giving your final guarantee for the next day.

Guarantees should be discussed with the catering manager to ensure that he can be flexible in terms of increasing the guarantee within 24 hours. If there is a large increase at the last minute and there are also special items in the menu that the hotel doesn’t normally have in stock then the same meal may not be served to anyone. This situation can be dealt by having the waiters serve the alternate items to entire tables that aren’t in the centre of the room.

If you need to have an accurate guarantee for the closing banquet a good idea would be to establish a banquet ticket exchange. You should announce in your registration material that there will be a ticket exchange as well as reserved seating for the banquet. Make sure the guests know when they can exchange tickets and make seats reservations and set a deadline for the reservations. Although the idea of ticket exchange guarantees cost control, it is also preferred by the guests because the can choose their companions instead of having to stampede into the room to reserve a table.

Initial Guarantee Example

The best way to make more accurate initial guarantees is to analyze pre-registration numbers from past years. Let’s assume you have one year’s past history and you need to make a guarantee for a lunch function. You need to start off by determining the percentage of pre-registrants that were actually served at the function. This number is the outcome of the division of the total number of covers served by the pre-registration total.

So, if the pre-registration total was 900 and the number of covers served was 810 then the percentage of pre-registrants actually served was 90% (810/900). Now, this information can be used to determine the guarantees for your current meeting. Initially, you multiply the total number of pre-registrants as of the day the initial guarantees are figured with the percentage that was calculated before (90%). This gives the projected attendance for the function. Based on the hotel’s overset policy (usually 3-5%), you should back off the numbers conservatively to allow for flexibility.

So, if the pre-registration total for the current function is 950 and the hotel overset is 5%, the projected covers will be 855 (90% of 950). Now, if you have just one year of history to rely on, then you should establish your guarantees on a 2.5 percent reduction of the projected attendance which is half the overset percentage. In other words, the guaranteed number for the function will be 834 (855 – 2.5%) and the maximum number set will be 876 (834 + 5%).