Planner Sourcing Guide: Chapter 7: Finding success with room block management
The Essential Planner Guide to Sourcing
Chapter 7: Finding success with room block management
When it comes to the event planning lifecycle, managing your room blocks can likely be one of the most time-consuming parts of the process…and it’s a major headache! That’s why planners are looking for solutions to make the process easier and the attendee experience flawless. We want to offer some useful tips when it comes to common challenges a planner faces with room block management.
1. Take charge of attrition risk and fill room blocks faster
As a planner, it can be a major guessing game deciding what size room block to contract. You know there is attrition risk when not meeting minimum room block requirements, plus there’s uncertainty that attendees won’t follow instructions and will book outside of the room block. The bottom line is you don’t want to be on the hook for unfilled rooms.
Top tip #1
Try giving event attendees booking options. Presenting hotel options during registration makes it easier for participants to book within the block, which means they are less likely to go elsewhere.
With room block management software, you can use technology to track attendee information and room pick-up in real time, allowing you to fill contracted room blocks faster. No more waiting for a hotel to send you reports on who has booked rooms just to know where you stand.
With an automated platform you can even keep bookings open past traditional cutoff dates, all the way until arrival based on your agreements, giving attendees access to the contracted group rate or fall back on the best available rate for the event dates.
2. Save time and eliminate manual errors
Collecting and consolidating attendee reservation information is a time-consuming manual process, requiring countless back and forth emails to hotel’s reservation or group departments addressing minor updates and changes. There are naturally errors when information is being manually collected and entered by several people. This could lead to unhappy attendees and extra work for everyone.
Top tip #2
You can automate your processes and make sure registration and reservations go hand in hand.
Use technology to allow your attendees to register for the event and book their rooms all in one step. Attendees can enter their own contact information, choose their check-in and check-out dates, and enter their credit card numbers. All of this is securely and automatically transferred to the hotel’s reservations system.
The best part is, the same online system that allowed attendees to enter their own booking information also lets them make changes to their reservation, putting registration and reservation accuracy into the attendee’s hands.
3. Create a set-up with optimal sightlines
It’s 5 p.m. and your boss wants you to validate that all VIP guests have booked their hotel rooms for the upcoming Conference that your organization plans, and she wants that validation before she leaves the office for the night. What do you do? Do you spend time calling the hotel to try to connect to someone in the groups department who may have the answer, or do you write an email hoping for an answer? There has to be a better way.
Top tip #3
What if you could run a report on a room block with a few simple clicks? What if you got automatic alert emails weekly or whenever the block hit certain pickup threshold?
Thanks to integrated technology tools, you can. Personalized and event-specific dashboards provide insights that allow planners to quickly track room-block productivity and manage rooming lists on their own.
By adopting new tools, integrating systems, and automating whenever possible, you can make room blocks into a strong and healthy part of the planning process. You can take charge of filling your room blocks and reporting to your stakeholders with a powerful system with even more powerful data.
4. Improve the attendee experience
Your attendees have registered and are now ready to reserve their rooms. You don’t want their pre-event experience to end here, you want them to continue through to the booking process with a seamless user experience. But, building individual booking sites with hotels is cumbersome, inefficient, and time-consuming for your all teams involved.
Top tip #4
You can provide your attendees with a seamless end to end user experience by creating a templated or completely custom booking website that carries the event branding into the hotel reservation process, using the latest technology.
These easy to design, attractive sites help increase the proportion of online group bookings to more than 50%, saving you time and money.
With no codes or special links to type in, your attendees will have an easy process that ensures rooms are booked within the room block, minimizing attrition.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Choosing Your Perfect Destination
Chapter 2: Finding the Perfect Venue
Chapter 3: Writing the Perfect RFP
Chapter 4: Evaluating Hotel Proposals
Chapter 5: Making the Most of Your Site Visit
Chapter 6: Negotiating with Hotels
Chapter 7: Finding success with room block management