How to Avoid or Reduce Your Hotel Attrition Liability
DON’T GUESS…Your contracted room block for your group should not be an educated guess. Use your historical numbers and your pre and post days are vital to keep your liability to a minimum. If it is a first time meeting, be cautious with your room block until you have better history.
DON’T WAIT…Don’t let time work against you. Talk to the hotel or talk to a hotel consultant (such as HPN Global) as soon as possible so that you can look at your contractual options. You may be able to reduce the room block with the hotel so they can give you credit on rooms that they may be able to resell.
INCENT YOUR ATTENDEES…Give your attendees a registration discount if they book within your hotel block. Many groups have also been successful in helping support their attendees by sending pre-made letters/emails on the benefits/value of attending the meeting/conference to their employers.
HOTEL RESERVATION AUDIT…Make sure you do in internal audit with the hotel to match their inhouse guest list with your attendee list to make sure you get full credit for all of your attendees staying in the hotel. Internet reservations and miscoding on group reservations is a great way to find additional reservations.
GIVE THE HOTEL OTHER REVENUE…If you have any off-site food and beverage events or other revenue producing items that you can move into the hotel, it will help offset your room revenue shortfall.
REBOOK…rebooking a future meeting/group into the hotel will help as most hotels will give you an attrition credit.
TALK TO A PROFESSIONAL…Sourcing your leads through a third party such as HPN Global will help because we place over 5,000 meetings/year and we can assist in leveraging other HPN Global business into the hotel to help make up for lost revenue. But before you start with any of the above items or if you have any questions, please call me. I have been in the hotel business for over 20 years and I AM HERE TO HELP!