How do hotel blocks work? Do you have to guarantee or pay to hold it? What if you dont make the guarantee. What happens?
I don't believe you have to pay anything to hold rooms. If you don't meet your guarantee the hotel will release the rooms back to the hotel. Some hotels have higher guarantees than others, so as long as you know pretty close to how many rooms you'd need, it shouldn't be in an issue.
I spoke to someone in Garden City Hyatt regarding blocking rooms. You don't need to pay to block rooms although you would need a credit card and a signed agreement to hold the date (they don't charge until everything is finalized) Also, room blocks are discounted so if on the date a certain percent of the rooms are not filled you will pay the regular rate of the room and the discount does not apply.
All the ones I spoke to, you don't get penalized if all the rooms aren't booked. You also don't need to put any money down (at least I didn't).
One hotel we went with you have to guarantee 60% or you will be charged the difference and the other one we went with told us that you block the rooms (no credit card needed) and people have until the month before to book the room or it goes for sale to the public
We blocked off a set of rooms at the Marriot of Islandia and the only way we would have to pay the difference of unreserved rooms is if we blocked off 25 or more rooms a night. We just blocked off 24, which is probably more than enough, to make sure we didn't have to deal with being held to any number.
They just release them like a month before the wedding if they are not used, at least that's what the Hyatt is doing
Posted by nyrvixen
One hotel we went with you have to guarantee 60% or you will be charged the difference and the other one we went with told us that you block the rooms (no credit card needed) and people have until the month before to book the room or it goes for sale to the public
I blocked rooms at the Hilton Garden Inn in Plainview, on Round Swamp Road, right off the LIE. You can book up to 15 rooms w/o financial commitment. Any rooms not booked will be released to the public one month before the wedding. If my 15 rooms get booked, they will add rooms to the block as needed, still giving the guests the special discounted rate. I dealt with the sales manager, Laurie, at the hotel and she was a pleasure to deal with. I went over there to check out the property and we did all the contracts via e-mail (which was great!) In addition, the hotel has a 13 passenger shuttle van which you can rent for the evening for $350. The van is exclusively yours, and will make as many trips between the hotel and your wedding venue as necessary!
