Along with everything else that goes into organizing an event, planners cannot overlook accommodations for attendees: in other words, that out-of-town attendees, exhibitors, speakers, and staff have a place to stay for the duration of an event.
Of course, you’ll want the booking process to be as convenient and cost-effective as possible for their own sakes, as well as for the hotels they’re booking with. That’s where a good room block management strategy (along with good room block software) comes into play.
What is a hotel room block?
A hotel room block is a group of rooms set aside by a hotel to be booked by event attendees, speakers, and exhibitors. Room blocks are typically reserved in set quantities based on predicted event attendance numbers, and they offer the advantage of fixed pricing for attendees who choose to book their accommodations within the room block.
With a good room block management strategy, an event organizer can bring room reservations and event registration together to help attendees streamline the booking process while getting more attendees to book within their room block.
What is room block management?
Room block management is the process of setting up and monitoring the status of room blocks. As an essential component of overall event management, event organizers own the entire room block management process, including: deciding how many rooms will be needed, establishing a room block agreement with one or more hotels, facilitating bookings, and monitoring how well bookings are going.
How do hotel blocks work?
Room blocks are meant to make things easier on event attendees who are traveling for an event. They’re often made available during event registration so attendees can book their event tickets and accommodations at the same time.
An event organizer will begin by creating a room block contract with their chosen hotel(s) for a set number of rooms at a fixed rates. These rooms will be bookable for event attendees during a set window of time, generally from the time registration begins to a few weeks or days before the event begins.
After an event organizer has contracted for a set number of rooms, those rooms should then be made available to exhibitors and attendees through the event website, which links directly to the hotel’s reservation system where room block users can then book their rooms.
Room blocks not only take away the added step of searching for and booking lodgings separately, they also typically offer attendees better rates or amenities. Should you choose to organize room blocks for your events, you’re offering convenience and cost savings, which are highly appealing business travel essentials.
Who pays for room blocks?
Event attendees usually pay for their own rooms during their event registration. In some cases, though, an organization might pay for entire room blocks for employees or staff attending the event, or they might choose to cover the cost for certain sponsors, exhibitors, or speakers.
Additionally, if there are rooms left vacant by the end of the contracted booking period, event organizers may have to pay for those remaining rooms. (This is called attrition; more on that later.)
7 tips for streamlining room block management for your events
While it might not feel like the most glamorous element of event planning, room block management can make a big difference for attendees, speakers, and exhibitors who have to travel to attend your event.
Of course, for all the added convenience attendees can experience thanks to room blocks, managing room blocks adds a layer of complexity for planners to navigate. To help simplify things, check out these tips for streamlining the room block process.
1. Get started as early as possible
As soon as the dates for your event are set, you should get your room blocking squared away. Starting room block management early will give you the best shot of having your preferred hotels available when you want them and give you more leverage when it comes to negotiating rates and other contract details.
2. Calculate the number of rooms you think you’ll need
If the event is one you’ve planned before, you should have a pretty good idea of roughly how many rooms you will need to accommodate your exhibitors, speakers, staff, and attendees. If not, you can estimate the number of rooms based on your targeted attendees, especially if you know how many will likely be coming from out of town.
With a number of variables outside your control—a shift in attendee figures, people choosing to use their loyalty points at different hotels, etc.—determining an exact, concrete figure is often impossible. That’s okay. Most hotels that offer room blocks understand the variability and will work with you to help you avoid excessive attrition.
FAQ: What is room block attrition?
Room block attrition refers to the number of rooms that are left empty in a contracted room block. Typically, any empty rooms remaining in a room block after a set date must be paid for by the event organizer.
Most hotel room block contracts will allow for a certain percentage of attrition without making event organizers pay for the unused rooms, but the exact figure can vary greatly. So, you want to be very sure you understand what the hotel’s attrition policy is and that it’s something you’re comfortable with.
3. Find your hotel(s)
If you expect a lot of people will need accommodations for your event, or you want to offer room blocks at different price points, you may need to work with more than one hotel to make sure you have the right variety of room blocks available. As part of your venue sourcing strategy, you should look at hotels’ number and types of rooms, their proximity to your event, and available amenities.
Offering more than one hotel option can be beneficial, as attendees and exhibitors may want to have more than one option to choose from. Make the options clear on your event website when it comes to the different rates, luxury levels, amenities, etc.
4. Finalize your room block contract
Once you think you’ve found the right hotel(s) to partner with, take your time sorting out your room block contract to ensure there are no unpleasant surprises. The final room block contract should be explicit when it comes to booking deadlines, fixed rates, included amenities, any negotiated room block discounts or amenities, and permissible attrition.
While some attrition may be unavoidable, there are a few room block management techniques that event planners can use to avoid excessive attrition and costly penalties. To help limit attrition, you can:
- Use metrics from past events, including total attendance numbers and number of attendees who previously traveled to your event, to estimate likely room usage before you sign your room block contract.
- Add a clause to your hotel contract that allows for a rolling release of rooms from your block, gradually returning a few rooms at a time back to the hotel before the final booking deadline to reduce your liability at the end. This can be especially helpful if you notice your room blocks aren’t seeing much traction.
- Ask all event speakers and exhibitors to book their rooms through your room blocks.
- Offer free rooms within your blocks as a freebie for select VIP attendees or speakers if it looks like you’ll have a good number of rooms leftover.
- Assign remaining rooms to your event staff, whose rooms you’d have to pay for anyway.
FAQ: Can you negotiate room block rates?
Yes, you can! You should always try to negotiate hotel room block rates to get the best pricing possible for attendees. After all, one of the biggest selling points for attendees and exhibitors deciding to use your room blocks is getting a room for a better-than-normal rate. This could be a straight percentage off the standard rate, discounted shoulder night stays, improved amenities, or some other event-specific deal.
According to the 2025 Cvent Planner Sourcing Report, 21% of planners say negotiating with a hotel or venue is the most challenging portion of the sourcing process. However, at least when it comes to negotiating a hotel room block, it doesn’t have to be. Hotels that offer room blocks want the group business you’re offering and are therefore apt to be open to your negotiations.
If discounted bulk rates aren’t available, or if they aren’t quite as impressive as you’d like, you can also negotiate for appealing amenities. For example, someone coming in to attend an event from out of town might appreciate meal packages or coupons, free transportation to and from the airport, tickets to a local attraction, and so on.
5. Market hotel room blocks to attendees
Once you have your room blocks confirmed and the contract signed, you should prominently feature the booking options on your event website and provide clear booking instructions for attendees. You want to make a big deal about the cost savings and convenience for attendees and exhibitors on your event site, on social media, and in any email reminders you may send out.
You should also include your room blocks in any materials sent out to exhibitors, speakers, and sponsors, who should all be booking within your room blocks.
In promoting hotel room blocks, it’s also important to establish booking deadlines. If it looks like you might have too many rooms blocked off, having a cutoff in your room block contract will allow the hotel to take them back with sufficient time to book them on their own.
On the other hand, if you need more rooms, knowing that well ahead of your event can give you time to add more rooms to your block (another provision you might want to include in your contract).
6. Monitor and analyze room block pick-up
Visibility is essential to good room block management. You’ll want to monitor how fast or slow bookings are going, both to accommodate current demand and to help you more accurately calculate things for next time.
You will also want to make sure you and your event are getting credit for room usage, even if users don’t go through the authorized booking route (through your website). Even if you are explicit about cost savings and amenities only being available to those who book through the official portal, there will always be those who forget or simply don’t follow your instructions.
Assuming you’ll have at least some attendees booking at your chosen hotel without going through your room block, you should work out details with your contracted hotel about how to track bookings that come in from elsewhere.
7. Get feedback
During and after your event, you should aim to get feedback from room block users and from partnering hotels. Was the booking process easy? Did your marketing efforts work to get most or all rooms booked? Were discounts or offered amenities satisfactory? Was communication sufficient?
The responses you receive can help you greatly when planning room blocks for your next event. You might consider partnering with different hotels in the future or negotiating different terms based on lessons learned this time around.
How technology can help
When it comes to room block management, technology is your best friend. Not only can the right accommodation and travel management software help streamline the process, but other event technology can help you manage your entire event venue checklist, from beginning to end.
To begin with, the right technology can act as a great hotel or venue sourcing tool. On a dedicated sourcing site, you have visibility into everything a hotel offers, as well as insight into how quickly they respond to RFPs (requests for proposals).
That same site enables you to reach out quickly to hotels with room block proposals, compare competing proposals, and stay in communication throughout your event planning.
After you’ve chosen the right hotel for your event, it’s important to choose the right room block management software. Doing so will make the booking process easy for guests and easy for you to keep track of where things stand by automating the reservation process and keeping track of those reservations for you.
Room block management software can offer so many advantages to planners, including reducing attrition, seamlessly managing multiple rooms blocks across different hotels, making communicating with hotels simpler, and making all booking information available to stakeholders to access as needed.
So many manual processes can be eliminated with the help of the right room block strategy, and with everything else you need to manage in planning events, why wouldn’t you do all you can to make your job easier and more efficient?
Want to learn more about how the right technology can assist with your room blocks? Try out this efficiency calculator, and find out just how much grief, time, and resources you can save with the help of room block management tech!
