Hotel blocks

[laughwithme]

What is the general rule for reserving hotel room blocks? We should have a "rough" guest list by end of this month. Let''s say 20 of these families (total of 40+ people) are "out of towners." We would GUESS that 10-15 of these families actually come to the wedding. Do I block 15 rooms? More? Less? What is the general rule for blocking hotel rooms?

Will the hotel ask of anything from me, like a credit card (I hope not...?) If we don''t use as many rooms as we reserved, are we penalized?

Thank you!!!

 

[ficklefaye]

laughwithme, i went through this as well, it actually varies with each hotel so you will need to give them a call, one place told us we needed to block out a minimum of 10 rooms, which was fine with us, but we would be penalized if we didn''t use all of them, then two weeks later, the same hotel called us and said we could block out at many rooms as we needed and they wouldn''t penalize us whether we used them or not, really weird, i guess it''s just a sign of the times

 

[kstar512]

We blocked rooms at two hotels. Both require that you do it in incriments of ten. There was no penatly if the rooms arent booked and no credit card was required. The only thing is that your guests have until 2 weeks before the wedding to book the room, after that the rooms are put back into the computer.

 

[Diva0413]

Date: 7/30/2009 12:03:27 AM
Author: kstar512
We blocked rooms at two hotels. Both require that you do it in incriments of ten. There was no penatly if the rooms arent booked and no credit card was required. The only thing is that your guests have until 2 weeks before the wedding to book the room, after that the rooms are put back into the computer.

Same here. I blocked rooms without penalty or credit card and the hold is released a month before the wedding date.

 

[marlie]

the hotel we booked allowed us to block 20 rooms with no guarantee, which means if we don''t have 20 rooms worth of guests it doesn''t matter b/c there is no penalty. We''ll probably need another 10 more and will have to guarantee them i think. if they block those and not enough people stay we''ll have to eat the cost of the rooms. they''ll give us a date around 6 weeks before the event as a deadline for our guests before they open them back up to the public.

kind of a hard thing to articulate for some reason!

 

[Hudson_Hawk]

We booked at two hotels, one lesser than the other and did 10 rooms at each for a total of 20. We invited probably 60 people and had 40 come, we used probably 14 of the 20 rooms.

ETA: I didn't have to secure the blocks with a cc, they gave us a good discount, and they released the block a month in advance, but gave people the discounted rate anyway if they called after the date and still said they were part of the group. The blocks really worked out for us because a month before the event a big city-wide event was announced and all of the hotels booked up and the rates jumped. My guests ended up saving over $100 because of the block. I was also able to upgrade my room to a Jr. Suite (which was HUGE)for only $20 more than the standard...