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I negotiated and also got hotel to provide shuttle service for my guests to and from the hotel to reception.
Their first offer was from $179 to $109 at the Hilton. I am paying for the shuttle though but it's only $300 for the night
Thats good to know- this is next on my 'to-do' list. Do you pay anything when you block rooms? Did you ladies estimate more or less rooms than you think your guests will actually need? I know some guests will want to stay at other hotels/bed and breakfasts so I'm not sure just how many rooms I will need?
Great post! I was also wondering about this. On a related note, how do you find out which hotels your guests are staying at? Will the hotel you blocked rooms at inform you? Do you have to ask them? (I am wondering because I want to do OOT bags.)
I only blocked off one hotel to make my life easier.
I blocked off 20 rooms for the first night and 25 for the second. We have about 60-70 out of town guests so I wasn't sure how many rooms to block off. A lot of my friends are college friends and when we go to weddings, we usually get the suites that can hold up to 6 people so we can pregame together. So I assume lots of people will be sharing rooms and wasn't sure what number to go with.
I didn't have to pay any fees but to get the discounts, guests must reserve up to a month before the wedding, after that, the block will become open and available to the public and the rate will no longer be available.
I was curious about this, too. Mr. P is a great negotiator, so he'll probably talk them down in price whether or not he's supposed to. : )
We did room blocks at three hotels for our guests, and none of them would negotiate with us. All three were chains. I was kind of irked by it because the group rate was actually slightly more expensive than some online deals, so I started to spread via word of mouth to our guests to keep an eye out for online deals before booking through the group block.
The only problem with that was, we didn't get accurate lists from our hotels when it came time to deliver OOT baskets. So we had to e-mail/call each guest to ask where they were staying. It was a pain, but worth it in the end.
But yeah, I even told the hotels about the cheaper online rates, and they still wouldn't come down in price saying they could only offer so much for group discounts.
I was wondering about this too. From a cursory inquiry about it, we weren't getting much of "discounts" by blocking and weren't sure even how many to block.
@MissChapstick - can I ask which hotels? We're looking into which one to block off right now.
@AliOopsieDaisy: I think it depends on the hotel. The hotel we are going with (big national chain) does not charge anything or even take down a credit card to make the block. If we get less people than the block calls for there is no penalty. So we are being safe and getting 30 rooms (we have 200 guests, many of whom are out of town).
@ScarletJwl: According to my hotel, you just email them and they will give you an updated list of everyone who has reserved a room for your block. Maybe not all hotels do this? Also ours is willing to hand out OOT bags at the front for no charge.
@Miss Chapstick - I agree, it seems like the prices aren't much better than their online rates. But I guess the benefit is you for sure have x number of rooms available for your guests? And in our case, it comes with shuttle to our venue.
I think the benefit to the block is that the guests can cancel at the last minute with no penalty (unlike other cheap rates). My hotel is throwing in certan perks if I get a certain number of rooms--one upgrade to a suite, one free room, OOT bags . . .. I should have negotiated free breakfast
You need leverage when negotiating....I had very little given the date of my wedding. I was constantly checking all the travel sites to see what other hotels were offering and for awhile my hotel room rate was still the best.
As we are approaching the wedding date, it was brought to my attention that one guest was able to get a "knock out rate" using hotelplanner.com and guests were considering a mutiny.
Happy ending, I was able to stop the mutiny by having my host hotel lower their rate close to the lowest bid.
My recommendation is use hotelplanner.com and put your hotel block up for bid to see what other hotels will come back with. Use those rates to negotiate. Good luck!
Our hotel (Hyatt Place) offered us a great discount automatically, no need to negotiate. We checked with other hotels in the area, most didn't give much of a discount and would need to be negotiated. Since March is high season here, it usually runs 180-200+, our deal is 119/night.
I just made sure the room block rate was $10 lower than the best rate I found on their website for an advanced purchase. They were fine with that.
I tried to block rooms for my guests at the hotel next to our reception venue and they told me straight up that they would not be able to beat the prices that people can get on their website.I figured, "Why bother then?" I can't fathom why a hotel would not at least offer another $5 for a room block, but we are getting married in high season in a super touristy spot. I just posted on my website that people should go to the website.
our block is at the radisson. i was told we were getting a discounted room rate of $120 and the regular rate was $160. right now when i look at room rates for the hotel they are like $126, so i guess our savings is actually $6 not $40. oh well, we had a lack of hotels to choose from and there are conventions in town plus holiday weekend that we have to compete with so i guess thats fine...our suite was discounted as well, but not comped.
I definatley had to negotiate - we were told it was $200 a night at a discount and they would be willing to go as low as $179... so I got a price from another local hotel at $129 in writing and showed it to them. I said if they could give us that rate and throw in a free room for the bride/groom then we would book there. They did!
All places I spoke with said they hold the rooms until a certain date - no risk to you. After that date (usually 4 weeks from the wedding) they release the rooms back into the system and at the regular rates as a standard hotel room - it does vary by hotel so that is a good question to ask in case you think people might try to book at the last minute, at least you could give your guests a heads up.
Wow, hotelplanner.com is really great. Thanks for sharing the tip, chitown-e. I signed up last week and this week I have 5 hotels that are a good price, close drive to our wedding, and are offering no deposits or attrition. I'll be setting up some meetings to see the hotels in the near future.
It does the work for you, and I haven't had to make any phone calls yet! Good thing for me, because phone calls like that make me nervous. :-P
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Just wondering - when a hotel offers you a hotel block price, should you try to negotiate it down a little or just take what they give you? We got our hotel down from their original block quote of $92 per room to $89 (not much of a discount but, whatever). Just wondering if most people try to negotiate or just take the price they give you.