Hotel Blocks or Room Blocks are hotel rooms that are booked together for out-of-town wedding guests. Most hotels offer great deals when rooms are bundled together and the hotel guests can enjoy being near to other family and friends during their entire stay at the location.
Advantages of getting a hotel block for wedding guests include:
- Getting discounted prices for the hotel rooms. It’s like buying any commodity in bulk, you always get to have the best deals in town.
- Having the guests conveniently bunched together in a single location, transporting them to and from the wedding venues is much easier.
- Family and friends are near to each other, giving them a chance to catch up with each other or even to meet those long-lost cousins or far-away college friends.
- No-sweat entertaining because you can pick a hotel with attractions nearby the hotel, plus getting them admitted as a group might just also score you a discounted rate at the gate.
Of course, some guests would prefer to stay in other hotels that they might have been to before and some might want to wing it with an AirBnb rental or to even stay with relatives and friends at the city and that is totally fine. The catch of getting hotel blocks is to allow guests to choose where they would want to stay and which one would fit their budget and personal needs. For brides, it is recommended to get a reserved block at at least two different hotels with varying price points. Make sure to read through the hotel block reservation agreement so you don’t miss out on what’s written in the fine print, you don’t want to pay extra expenses due to unused hotel rooms and unfulfilled contracts with hotels.
To help you in ironing out the hotel block reservations, here are a couple of important points:
To book or not to book.
Real talk: You don’t have to reserve an entire block of rooms if there are only less than 10 guests flying in. If your guests live nearby the venue or city of the wedding, have numerous other family and friends in the area that are offering to host them, or live in a different state but are not yet 100% sure that they will be flying in for the wedding – chances are you wasting your time even planning for a hotel block. Move on to the next item down your to-do list.
Be an early bird.
Ideally, you can start looking up your accommodation options once you and your future hubby have locked in the venue for the wedding. Especially for places with limited hotels in the vicinity, make sure to book your hotel blocks as early as possible to avoid the crowds. Pass on the information regarding the hotel and the location to your out of town guests as well so they can make their plans ahead of time.
Be in the know.
Negotiating contracts with regards to the rooms can be tricky. Make sure to have a wedding planner or someone with you to explain the unfamiliar clauses and terms. Get to know what you should do when there are rooms which are left unused or unsold by your wedding guests and also get to understand how many days in advance should a room be reserved before the hotel deems it open for other bookings and clients.
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