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  • 1.  Hotel Reservations

    Posted 01-28-2022 11:07
    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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  • 2.  RE: Hotel Reservations

    User Group Member
    Posted 01-28-2022 13:08

    We have always handled staff room night bookings ourselves.  Our staff point person for the hotel does this for all staff.  We survey staff well in advance about their checkin/checkout dates and whether they want to stay during shoulder dates.  We feel this gives greater control to us to ensure all staff that will be part of the event have a room night early in the process.  If staff reply to the survey that they will not be attending, we don't save them any room nights, and we can also plan for their absence and how that affects the event.  We also have a staff dinner the night before our largest event to support staff team building and their answers to the survey help us plan for that too.

     

    Carl

     

    *As a reminder, our offices are closed on Friday

     

     






  • 3.  RE: Hotel Reservations

    User Group Member
    Posted 01-28-2022 13:14

    Just realized I was responding to the wrong question.  For our biggest event wherein we have about 300 members, we have all our attendees register themselves with the hotel.  For our smaller events that have 25-35 people, including our staff, we handle the room night bookings for everyone.






  • 4.  RE: Hotel Reservations

    Posted 01-28-2022 14:58
    Hi Carl, thank you for your feedback; it is very helpful. Personally, for larger events, I think it is better to have attendees handle their own hotel reservations.

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    Jayne Ferro
    Support Staff Specialist
    NYSUT
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  • 5.  RE: Hotel Reservations

    User Group Member
    Posted 01-28-2022 17:17

    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
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  • 6.  RE: Hotel Reservations

    Posted 01-31-2022 09:19
    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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