Hi Hayley, thank you for your insight. You make a lot of great points about keeping the hotel process in-house. In most cases, we manage our own room blocks; however, in this new pandemic environment, we wondered if our attendees would prefer dealing directly with the hotel. We also have quite a few double rooms in each block and we match up roommates if they request each other; but, it gets challenging when only one roommate has registered. That being said, it is easier for the registrant to do everything in one place.
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Jayne Ferro
Support Staff Specialist
NYSUT
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-28-2022 17:16
From: Hayley Contegiacomo
Subject: Hotel Reservations
Hi Jayne,
We are a third party event management company so our answer might be slightly different, however we typically manage hotel blocks for all events of all sizes ourselves rather than having the attendee contact the hotel directly. A few reasons we do this are
* The attendee only has to register for the event and within this process they request their hotel requirements (less work for the attendees)
* We can keep a better eye on the attrition and make changes where required, less risk of penalties
* We can make sure people have requested the correct dates (where flights are required, we check flights/accom matches) or if they are needed to come in early we can make sure this is correct at the time of booking
* We can send final confirmation emails with everything listed on the one document
* We can see who hasnt requested accommodation and see their reason for not requesting a room (i.e local) to ensure no one arrives without a room
* We can easily make changes onsite for attendees if required
We often manage just the accommodation for some of our clients events since it does take some additional steps, but we do see a lot of benefits from managing the accommodation for all attendees.
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Hayley Contegiacomo
Chief Operating Officer
Huddle Agency
Original Message:
Sent: 01-28-2022 11:06
From: Jayne Ferro
Subject: Hotel Reservations
Hi Cvent Community,
This is a really general question, and I realize that in-person hasn't really been happening in these last two years; but, for those of you that handle housing blocks for conferences where attendees are not your staff but members, for example, would anyone be willing to share whether you prefer managing the housing on your end or having your attendees book with the hotel directly? Thank you in advance for any thoughts on this.
#ManagingRoomBlocks
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Jayne Ferro
Support Staff Specialist
NYSUT
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