Good Times Are Here… Watch Out! While hotels are rejoicing over record high, average room rates, record occupancy, and of course, profits, many have lost track of protecting their customers from some unscrupulous room block practices. The higher occupancies at hotels have opened the door to a level of profit opportunism that was foreign to many of these “partner oriented” hotels and hotel chains just two years ago. Hotel owners are putting pressure on hotels to produce more profits in this period of incredibly high demand. What is lost in the shuffle is the focus on the spirit of a contract between a client and a hotel supplier. When a planner signs a contract for 300 rooms, it is clear that the planner’s group is financially responsible for those rooms. If the group doesn’t pick up their block, and becomes liable for attrition or meeting room charges, they are expected to live up to their side of the contract and make the hotel whole. Incredible as it may sound, many hotels have systems in place to make it difficult for a group to actually fill their block. Look at what some of these practices/systems are: Despite the fact that you are responsible for the guest rooms that you’ve contracted, many hotels will not allow you to change the names on a room reservation if the hotel is anywhere close to being sold out. These hotels treat the name change as a cancellation and you lose the room. Some hotels will not make rooms available to you after your cutoff date because your contract requires that they do so at the group rate. Since they can sell these rooms at a higher rate after the cutoff, it would be less profitable for them to extend the group rate. While I understand this position, most groups would be willing to forsake their after, cutoff-rate protection to give their attendees the option of booking the hotel at a higher rate. (This would also lessen a group’s liabilities at the hotel.) When the group does not allow its rate to be increased after the cutoff, the hotel accepts reservations from your group anyway at a higher rate and your block is not credited. Many hotels do not have a policy in effect that permits you to match your registration list against the hotel’s ‘in-house’ list (Sheraton is a wonderful exception). Because of this practice, groups have been billed for attrition despite the fact that the number of rooms their group occupied exceeded the allowable attrition. Even when hotels have been totally sold out, they have billed groups for thousands and tens of thousands of dollars if the attrition levels were not met. When you consider that attrition policies exist to protect hotels from having unsold rooms, you have to ask “If the hotels sold all their rooms why would they bill us for attrition?” Great question! Sadly, the answer is that these hotels are more concerned about increasing their bottom line than they are in enhancing the customer relationship. When a hotel does run a group’s registration list against their in-house list and finds mis-coded rooms, some hotels will not give the group credit for these rooms for the purposes of comps, attrition or agency commission. This is probably the greatest injustice of all. There is no credible explanation for this except to say that these hotels (in the distinct minority) care far more about short run cash than they do about long-term relationships and to be frank, basic fairness. While there are more predatory practices, the preceding examples are enough to alert planners to the problem we are all facing. So what can we do about it? Our industry is populated by a good number of extraordinary people with high integrity. These leaders on the hotel side need to stand up for their customers. They need to look into these examples and establish policies that allow clients to get full credit for the rooms occupied by their attendees. Every group should have the right to check their list of registrants against the hotel’s ‘in-house’ list. If the hotels hide behind the issue of privacy, then they should still provide a list that shows guest name and arrival/departure information only. As long as no affiliation, address or phone number is provided by the hotel, then, it is an impossibility to identify exactly which ‘John Smith’ is in the hotel. If there is a match, the planner could provide additional information for the hotel to verify that the guest came to the hotel as part of the meeting. Additionally, make sure you stress in your marketing materials the importance of your attendees showing that they are affiliated with your group. They are much more likely to get the group rate and to be properly coded to your group. By maximizing your true pick up, you will lessen the liability for your organization and your membership. The real issue comes down to basic fairness. Clients should not tolerate any system that unfairly puts them at higher risk. Don’t be afraid to write to the Presidents and Sales Vice Presidents of the hotels and chains where these problems exist. These executives are generally ‘salt of the earth’ type people who will support your concerns. There is no good reason that these practices need to continue if all of us speak up. Join me in being heard.