Hotel rooms

saracw14

I have spoken to local hotels about discounted rates for our guests on our wedding night, and the one I would like to book a block with has a policy that we have to use at lease 70% of them - so if we booked a block of 10 and only 6 people booked with them, we'd have to pay for the one room that wasn't booked. I want to get a better idea of who will want to book a hotel room for the night, so I've put it as an option on my website when people RSVP. Are there any rules of etiquette about that? I worded it "Yes, I will need to book a hotel room" or "No, I will not need to book a hotel room" and explained that I'd like them to indicate that on the "guest information" page so that we can get an idea of how many rooms to block off. I don't want our guests to think that we're offering to pay for the rooms for them but I don't think I've implied that anywhere. What do you think? Is this ok to do?

annakb8

Find a hotel where you don't have to guarantee a certain percentage of rooms are booked. Problem solved.

pantherRN

Ditto Anna. The hotel we blocked at says that if guests don't book four weeks in advance, the rooms just go back into the pool of rooms.

mica178

Have you checked out hotelplanner.com ?  I used it to find local hotels that didn't require a guaranteed number of hotel rooms booked, no deposit from me, etc. 

saracw14

Sadly there are really limited options on hotels in this area. The only halfway decent one is the one I've already talked to. The nearest others that are nicer are about 20 minutes away. Is it ok to book a block in a hotel that far? I have relatives coming from England and Illinois (wedding in Connecticut), so 20 minutes is definitely closer than home...what do u think?

mica178

Could you ask your parents and FILs if they think people are likely to use your block vs book on their own?  That might give you a better idea of whether to bother with blocking the hotel rooms or not.

I think 20 minutes is fine, but it's nice if there are closer options.

pantherRN

Can you add rooms later? That way, you could start out with a smaller number of rooms and as guests reserve them, add more?

Meg1036

Are they giving you enough of a discount to be worth the risk?

If the hotel is reasonably priced on its own, no need to block rooms.  Just give your guests the hotel's information.

saracw14

Ahh thats a good idea - don't know why I didn't think of that. Ha - might be the 453789432 other things I'm trying to figure out! Perhaps I should delegate this to my parents anyway, since I haven't asked for their help with anything else yet! Gotto remember to ask for help when I need it...

TurtlesAllTheWayDown

We had a min room guarantee. We just looked at who was likely to come and book a room. We therefore started off with a small block (10 rooms) and upped it accordingly when they filled.

tenofcups4me

I would think that by the time guests are RSVPing, it would be too late to get a block anyway, wouldn't it? In my case, our block ended right around the time the RSVPs were due -- I also don't know how you'd have time to get all the RSVPs, tally them, and get the block before people wanted to book their hotel rooms. 

firsttimersluck

Since we're getting married in September, most people aren't travelling to Washington State and therefore we don't have to worry about hotels booking up... We just decided to post a couple hotel options on our wedding website, but didn't do any "blocks" ......