A word to the wise on hotel blocks

beka0404 · August 2010

Long story short, when I made our initial room block, I requested 40 rooms. Our hotel would only give me 21 but said as soon as the first 20 filled, they would definitely release more. Sent STDs in February (just had website on card, no hotel info) and half the rooms booked, so the hotel added five more in April.

Fast forward to this week: Invites went out last week, all 26 rooms booked, and when I called to request the 25 or more rooms still needed for our block, I was told the hotel is sold out... they only have 200 rooms. I was then told that Sep/Oct are the busiest months for hotels in DT Mpls.

So... learn a lesson from my mistakes:

- It's always better to overestimate on number of rooms needed for your hotel block rather than be short rooms

- If you are expecting a large group, going with a bigger hotel (more than 200 rooms) is the safest bet

- If your wedding is in Sep/Oct in DT Mpls, be aware that things are REALLY busy for hotels during those months

- It can make for poor aesthetics, but consider putting your hotel's phone number on your STD... our wedding website has been a flop thus far.

That is all.

golden1215 · August 2010

Oh wow.... what hotel?

I've also had some issues with my small block in DT Mpls.

Is there another hotel next door you can book a block at or are you just S.O.L.?

SuperRNluvsChef · August 2010

Thanks for the advice!

Muffers · August 2010

ooh, good idea! If you don't mind, I'll add a few tips from my experience:

*Book your blocks early, you never know what might be going on in the area the weekend of your wedding

*Put the hotel's local phone number on your inserts & wedding website, rather than the 800 number, it guarantees your guests will get that particular hotel and not the run-around

*Book a block at more than 1 hotel, even if you're not sure you will need that many rooms. we blew threw our first block and had to scramble to get a block at another nearby hotel (and that was still months before the wedding)

*designate someone to be "in charge" of room blocks, to call and check in with the hotels every now and again to see how many rooms have been booked, if there have been any issues, if you need to add rooms, etc. My mom offered to do this for us and it has been really helpful to have that off our plate. if we were in charge of it we wouldn't have been on top of it with all the other things going on.

dcprep · August 2010

That's bizarre -- why is it so busy in Mpls then??

We created an Accommodations insert to go along with our STD magnet. I too discovered that most people didn't go to our website, even though I purchased a domain on GoDaddy and created a super easy URL to go to. So I've been dealing with people asking me, "Oh, do you have hotels blocked off?" Ummmm... clearly they did not even look at the accommodations insert, and clearly they never bothered checking out our website. Hmpf.

martiac225 · August 2010

Did you use the knot's website? I've been wondering if that will work for our guest information??

loopy82 · August 2010

No one has looked at our website either. Our room block is at a hotel right by the fairgrounds and our wedding is during the fair. Knowing that these two events coincided we made a room block in November, a few weeks after getting engaged. We told all of our OOT guests and a number of guests in the area about the block. This information was also printed on the insert that went out with the invitations at the beginning of June. So wouldn't you know, guests wait until this week to make reservations. The hotel is booked, they don't get rooms.

We vaguely remembered that there was a release date for any unrented rooms. That has no passed and the one remaining room was released. I wish I would have remembered that date to remind a few guests that they needed to make reservations before that date.

Our hotel was really bad for actually putting our guests in our room block. I checked fairly frequently to see how many rooms had been reserved. They always told me less than the number of people that I know had reserved rooms. They also told us that we could use a meeting room free of charge if we had 10 room reservations. Well we have had the 10 rooms for a while now, and last week they tried telling us they had given the room to someone else and we couldn't use it.

leggwilliams · August 2010

Thanks for the advice! My wedding is on Labor Day weekend so this is a huge concern of mine!

debbieupper · August 2010

I'm also surprised that Sept/Oct are the busiest months. Our hotel said October is a pretty non-busy month (it's the Marriott by the airport). I'm sorry that happened to you, though. Frustrating!

lboerner88 · August 2010

Thanks for the advice. I really need to start my hotel block soon! I have been avoiding it!

shan87 · August 2010

I am so glad we are having our reception at a Hotel and they have been really helpful they are even holding 10 rooms for Fri before our Wedding and 20 rooms Sat of our Wedding for our Guests. So if ppl are that bad and wait untl that night to book a room I know we have 20 rooms for us.
Nothing but great things to say about our reception site- to date!!

Good Luck to all the Hotel Blocking ladies

tklund · August 2010

Thanks for the advice on hotel rooms! I gotta get going on getting the blocks of rooms. Our wedding is on Lake Minnetonka so the closest hotels are in Chanhassen, so I kinda wanted to go and see how far from the reception the hotels actually are. Our wedding coordinator at our venue said the hotels will do a shuttle service from the venue to the hotel, which will be great!

I think the DT MPLS hotels are so busy in the fall because of the Gopher football games and Vikes games. My fam usually books DT hotel rooms after Gopher games since they don't usually want to drive home after the game.

beka0404 · August 2010

Sorry I posted and ran - we were out of town this weekend.

@golden - I won't post the hotel here, but they're listed in my vendor bio.

@dcprep - I'm not sure. My guess is Vikings games, Twins games, conventions, etc.

@Martiac - No, we used a mywedding.com site - I didn't want to deal with the hassle of The Knot's long URLs.

@loopy - OMG. I know that people have other things going on in their lives, but waiting until the week of the wedding is so not smart. I'm having to remind myself that it's not my responsibility to secure accommodations for guests - as you said, if they don't take matters into their own hands in a timely fashion, they are SOL.

A word to the wise on hotel blocks

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