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Lodging for Meetings, Events, Social Functions
Booking sleeping room accommodations that will please the majority of the overnight guests who will attend your meeting or event may seem a daunting task, but a little advance homework can produce invaluable information about attendee preferences that will help you make the best selection. Equally as important as pleasing your attendees is convincing yourself and the lodging venue you want to book that the group room block you are requesting is realistic! Better to be conservative in the number of rooms you book than to face penalties if the numbers in your group fall short of expectations.
If this is a first-time event, a little deeper research will be required to get the information you need about attendees, and you will need to schedule more time to get it done.
If your group has held similar types of meetings or events in the past, there should be a final report on file that gives you most of the information you need. A few phone calls may be required to hotels or other lodging venues that were used to verify actual group history, but that will be relatively quick and easy to do.
However, the significant changes to the world economy in the last few years has greatly impacted how individuals make decisions about booking overnight accommodations. With organizational and personal budgets tightened, greater caution is used when deciding whether to travel and stay overnight at all and, if so, the type of property they now consider suitable may be very different. Because of this, lodging venues are asking for convincing information that your group attendance will still materialize at the same level as in the past, so it is important that you revisit the current lodging preferences of those you are inviting to attend your event. Check out the tips in the link below on how to meet attendee expectations.
The types of hotels and guest room accommodations that are available range from elite to budget properties, full- or limited-service hotels, family or luxury resorts, preferred hotel groups, bed and breakfast inns, university campuses and more. Prices are more negotiable now than they have ever been, but sometimes getting the lowest price is not the best deal. The type of services and amenities that your guests are accustomed to needs to be considered if you don’t want an unhappy group. Most people understand the need of organizations to be more cost conscious and sensitive about luxury items but, depending on the type of group, they may still resist attending if they have to “go bare bones!”
Once this basic homework has been done, you will be ready to start the booking process. Here are steps to walk you through the process ...