You have decided for reasons covered in another of my articles that you want to hold a hotel room block for your exhibitors or delegates and that you would prefer to manage the hotel room block yourself.

You have contracted with the hotel, maybe using advice I’ve provided in another article, and now are in the final step of managing the bookings themselves. You’re now in the most time consuming stage where you need to manage the multiple changes and various requests of the delegates/exhibitors.  Management of the hotel room block begins…

Lists and Spread sheets

Everyone has a preference on how to manage data, but whether it is on paper or an excel spread sheet, you will need to keep track of the rooms you have blocked and who has booked each one. There are templates available on the web to help you with this or you can of course design your own (Hotel Desk can assist you with this too).

Managing your Hotel Room Block Changes and Cancellations

Until you have submitted your rooming list to the hotel you will be managing all the cancellations and changes for the block. You will need to be able to handle special requests e.g. room near to lift or disabled room, additions of extra shoulder dates and the constant name changes. As well as making the necessary changes you should also keep a record of the requests so that you can refer back to them should you need to.

The hotel won’t need to be told about cancellations, changes or bookings until you submit the rooming list. Until this point the hotel room block is your responsibility.

Once the rooming list and special requests have been passed onto the hotel (on the date agreed in the contract) you can either direct all new changes straight over to the hotel, or try to continue to manage them yourself and act as the intermediary until the guest arrives at the hotel.

Clearly the easiest route is to pass the responsibility over to the hotel as soon as possible. Just ensure that your delegates/exhibitors are happy with the process, and are communicated as to the process of changes and cancellations.

You may of course have agreed with the hotel that all delegates/exhibitors book direct with the hotel and just quote a “booking code”, meaning no reservation management! The flip side is that normally means that there is no commission payment to you though.

Preparing the Final Rooming List

Of course up until the agreed cut-off date now the hotel doesn’t have any names or details of the individual people who have booked the rooms, they are just holding a hotel room block against your guarantee. On the date agreed in the contract you will need to send a full list of all the bookings across to the hotel.

If you have used a clear and simple spread sheet then that would probably be enough for the hotel (including names, credit card info, special requests etc).

Releasing and Requesting Rooms

A key area that can influence the relationship between you and the hotel is being flexible with releasing rooms. As soon as you can be sure that you won’t need as many rooms as you have in the hotel room block you should let the hotel know, and release some back to them.

If you can keep a good relationship with the hotel then if you are looking for additional rooms or need to ask a favour then you’re in a better position.

The stage at which you will be likely to be requesting additional rooms will be within the final few days or weeks before your event. Last minute desperate calls to you from exhibitors or delegates looking for bedrooms at your preferred rate will have to be dealt with by trying to call in favours from the hotel.

 

 

Paying for the Rooms

You would have already agreed in the contract as to how the rooms are to be paid for. Either there will be a master account that you will pay for or you will provide all the guests credit card information to the hotel for them to charge direct. It should have already been made clear to the guests exactly who will charge their credit card and when the money will be taken.

Collecting Owed Commission

Your event is over, all the conference delegates have returned home, the exhibition displays taken down and you have slept for a week. It is now time to chase the commission that is owed to you.

A friendly call through to your hotel contact to ask for the final room booking numbers is a good place to start. You know how many room nights were originally booked but there will always be changes and cancellations that you don’t know about.

Hotels are notorious in taking their time to pay out commissions, and some will give you a time line of a few months before their accounts teams have checked all the numbers. This is where the larger hotels are more complex than the smaller, independent ones. Friendly, regular nudges are the best way to go, with reminders as to the approximate number of room nights and commission owed to you.

Managing a hotel room block can be the most straight-forward or the most stressful process to go through, so make sure you have not under-estimated the number of hours it takes. You don’t want to start slipping and provide a terrible service half way through!

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This article has been writted and provided by the team here at Hotel Desk.  We provide an online hotel booking service to event and exhibition organisers across the world. A customised “Event Hotel Desk” can be built within hours, providing the organiser with a commission generating hotel booking service, which can be promoted to their visitors/delegates. We can also provide Group Contract assistance with your hotel room block.

 

Tags: ACC Liverpool, Bangkok BITEC, Birmingham NEC, Brighton Centre, Brussels Expo, Crocus Expo, Earls Court London, Edinburgh EICC, ExCel London, Farnborough Airshow, Frankfurt Messe, Glasgow SECC, London Olympia, Manchester Central, Mandalay Bay Las Vegas, Porte de Versailles Paris, RAI Amsterdam