Room blocks

n82ureluvr915

Our hotel is asking us to put down a 10 percent deposit for the room blocks. If less than 80 percent of the rooms are not booked we are financially responsible for them. The minimum amount of rooms I can hold is 10. According to my calculations I will only need 7 or 8. I don't want to go forward with the block because of this but feel I would be cheating my guests out of a discounted rate. WWYD?

Jennifer0488

What about a different hotel?

mlg78

That's a horrible deal. Take your business elsewhere.

kdjj

I agree, take your business elsewhere. I have two room blocks (different price points) and they are booth courtesy blocks. Is your wedding at this hotel? If it were me, and my wedding were at this hotel, I would attempt at negotiating the room blocks for free. May not work, but if the wedding is there, they are making loads off you already, a courtesy block will only help that. Good luck.

BostonGIrl4732

We have the same deal at our hotel.  I emailed my whole family and told them I was planning for hotels and gave them the rate.  I asked if they thought they would be interested in staying so I could make sure we blocked enough rooms.  After we heard back, we figured we'd probably book about 30 rooms, so that's what we blocked off.  We need 24 rooms blocked or we have to pay.  It stinks, but for us, there were no other reasonable hotels.  Everything else was either ten times more expensive (with the same policy) or at least forty minutes away.

I think you should just book the ten rooms because you think you'll only need eight.  If you run out of rooms, they might let you up the number in the block.  If not, your guests are adults and can find a hotel in the area (or pay the normal rate).  That's just my $0.02 anyway.  We only blocked because we thought we'd get at least 30 rooms, but now we're finding out the people who told us they were going to stay might not.

TayBeach2013

We have a courtesy block of 10 rooms at our hotel - if the manager gets close to that number, he'll call and we can bump it up another 10 if need be.  However, I was only offered this option when I asked; the clerk simply asked for a credit card number and I shut that down quickly!

jmd921154

Hi - that's definitely odd. I got pricing for 3 different hotels in the area, and ALL 3 were courtesy blocks with NO financial obligation. I would definitely do some research if you can avoid it. If you can't, I agree with other posters in blocking LESS than you think you need. Again, people are adults and some will wait until the last minute to book as well.

We ended up getting a 2 night block - 10 for the night before the wedding (for out of town guests, groomsmen, etc) and 20 for the night of the wedding. They also said if we run out, we can negotiate more at no price.

Hope this helps!

SummerGrl15

Wow... that is crazy! I have 15 rooms blocked off at a hotel, with zero financial obligation.  If the rooms are not booked within a month of the wedding, then they simply release them to be sold to other potential customers.  I would highly recommend looking elsewhere. 

n82ureluvr915

I think it's that way because this is beach hotel. I went on expedia and a lot of hotels in the area are already booked that weekend. I have decided to not do the block and instead ask my guests to go ahead and reserve their rooms now. They offer military and senior discounts (we are military and so are a few of our guests plus a few are over 60) that are actually LESS than the block rate they quoted me. I was a wedding planner in a big city for 7 years and would always tell my brides to never pay for a room block. I just wanted to see if anyone else, especially destinaiton/beach brides, were running into the same issue. Thanks for your input!

Aliadee1984

Maybe just give out/ or post on your website three nearby hotels with nice rooms in decent prices. When I called around the one hotel closest to my venue had a similar requirement but we couldn't afford the burden. So I booked a block a little further away that will run a complimentary shuttle to the wedding and will provide that hotels info and the invite, and list the closer option on the website.