If your event includes accommodation, you'll usually book a block of rooms with a hotel and fill it from your guest list. Managing who needs which night, keeping within your allocation and getting an accurate rooming list to the hotel is where it often goes wrong. Here's how to keep it under control.
Understand your room block
Before you invite anyone, know how many rooms you have on each night, the release date when unused rooms go back to the hotel, and any attrition terms. Your deadlines for guests should come well before the hotel's.
Decide who is offered a room
Will you offer rooms to everyone who accepts, or only to some guests, such as speakers, VIPs or people travelling from abroad? Decide up front so the invitation and reply form say the right thing to the right people.
Ask on the reply form
Collect room requests when guests reply rather than by separate email. Show the nights available, the hotel details and what's included, and let guests add a note such as a late arrival.
Decide how requests are approved
Approve automatically if everyone eligible gets a room. If rooms are limited or need sign-off, approve requests yourself and tell guests the outcome. Approving in bulk saves time when requests arrive together.
Track numbers against your allocation
Keep a running total for each night against your block. If you're close to the limit, you can ask the hotel for more rooms before the release date rather than after.
Send the hotel a clean rooming list
Hotels need one row per guest with the nights they're staying, anyone sharing and any notes. Send it by the hotel's deadline, then send updates as changes come in.
Accommodation in DelegateFlow
DelegateFlow's accommodation management lets you add the nights you have rooms for with a limit per night, offer rooms to everyone or selected delegates, collect requests on the reply form, approve or decline in bulk with automatic emails to guests, and download a rooming list for the hotel.
