Blocking

From ConRunner
Revision as of 18:50, 9 July 2012 by Phi (Talk | contribs)

Jump to: navigation, search

Blocking is the preparatory step, before opening hotel reservations, of allocating rooms to two or more blocks so that the hotel's reservation system will accept the correct number and type of reservations such that each hotel guest can be placed in a suitable room.

One challenge to blocking is that the hotel probably thinks of their inventory along different lines from the way the convention will think of them. Most hotels have between two and six different bed configurations, and within each bed configuration a small number of fanciness levels, with rooms of each bed configuration and level scattered through the hotel. In ordinary operations, almost all hotels will consider these rooms to be equivalent and will exchange guests between them at will to satisfy room readiness constraints at check-in time. Some hotels even consider different bed types to be equivalent, or consider smoking and non-smoking rooms equivalent, caring only about (say) how nice their view is when allocating rooms to reservations. When constructing a blocking, making sure that the convention attendees' needs *can* be met is only half the battle. Making sure that the blocking works with the front desk agents' training and not against it will ensure that the attendees' rooming needs are *actually* met.

The rest of this article lays out the blocking process for a typical hotel.

Before you begin

Get an accurate hotel room inventory from the hotel, showing every single room, its type and subtype according to the hotel's reservation system, whether it connects to any other rooms in the hotel, its handicap access status (many hotels have multiple access room types), any special features like doors to a patio that might not be reflected in the hotel's idea of subtype, and anything else you can get out of the hotel. Put this all in a spreadsheet, one row to a room.

Choose a number of blocks

Blocks for bed types, or not?

Some hotels can easily put, say, 80 Double/Double and 60 King rooms into the Quiet block, and have their reservation system actually sell that many rooms and tell attendees when one of the room types in the block is sold out. Some hotels can't do this and take the King vs Double to be a request, not a promise. Answer this question and do not let *any* other consideration drive whether you have separate blocks for, in this equation, Quiet Kings and Quiet Doubles. If the hotel uses Passkey, it is the former kind.

Blocks for set-aside rooms, or not?

Some hotels will easily allow the convention organizers, without providing a credit card and usually through a back door to their reservation system, to make a large reservation, or a few such reservations, as a way to set aside guest rooms that will be needed later (for dealers, for instance, if the dealers' selection is done after hotel reservation opens, or for convention functions or guests of honor or late-added program participants or late-recruited volunteers), and can easily transfer a room (or better yet, allow the convention organizers to transfer a room) from this set-aside reservation to a specific reservation when more information is known about who will be in it, or reduce the size of the reservation to make rooms available to the general membership when the convention determines that it does not meed them. If the hotel uses Passkey and gives you access, it is of this type.

Other hotels will allow convention organizers to set aside a block from which the general public are not allowed to make reservations, and can easily make or allow to be made a reservation in this block, or move rooms out of this block when the convention determines that it does not need them. Be careful! Many hotels claim that they will not let the general public book rooms in the restricted blocks, but their national-chain telephone agents might not get the memo, or might prefer to make a room reservation they shouldn't than make someone on the phone angry.

Hotels can be in zero, one, or both of the above types. If they are in the former type, combine your set-aside rooms with the ordinary rooms of the appropriate type and use hotel reservations to set aside reservations. If they are not, but they are in the latter type, make a special block (or blocks, if you need one per bed type) -- but be sure it will really protect your inventory. If they are in neither type, you are probably better off making a large number of small reservations and transferring them as needed, all using whatever mechanism is available to the attendees.

Blocks for rooms on the master bill, or not?

Some hotels will allow the convention organizers to identify rooms from the general reservation list to be put on the master bill. Other hotels can easily move reservations into a special block for this purpose. It is fine to do this whichever way the hotel prefers, but if you have a Master Bill block it should start out empty and have rooms added to it, because there is no way you will ever correctly predict how many and what type of rooms will be on the master bill.

Blocks for Smoking and Access

Most hotels can't track requests for smoking or access vs. inventory. However, that doesn't mean you necessarily need separate blocks for these. There are few enough requests for either that they can be handled by putting them on the rooming list.

Smoking

Making this a block makes it clear to people who're reserving a smoking room after all the non-smoking rooms are gone that that is what they're doing, especially since the reservation system probably does not make it clear to people who say 'no preference' that they might get smoking. So if the non-smoking rooms are likely to sell out, this is worth doing. But if you don't expect non-smoking rooms to sell out, or if you can assign any smoking rooms you don't need to non-convention guests and make assigning those the hotel's problem, then having a block might stick you with more smoking rooms than you want.

Access

The problem with Access is that people requesting an Access accommodation might need any of a large number of actual accommodations, which might or might not line up with the features present in the hotel's Accessible guest rooms. People will request Access when what they really need is a low floor, or proximity to the elevator. Even among people requesting Access because they need a wheelchair-accessible room, their needs for (for instance) a roll-in shower or a tub with handbars will differ. No joy will come of making a separate Access block. Just tell people to make whatever kind of reservation they want and request Access from you so you can figure out their actual needs. Warn them that accommodating their Access needs might mean moving them into a different block (for instance, all those low floor rooms might be noisy if they're right over the ballroom in which the late night dances are held). If you think you will run out of Access rooms even after moving people who just need a low floor into ordinary low-floor rooms, it might help to save aside a couple of rooms in whatever blocks the physical Access rooms wind up in, to make moving people between blocks easier. This might also be useful if you want to be able to get people into the main hotel instead of an overflow hotel for access reasons.

Blocks for Staff, Shabbos, etc

Don't make separate blocks for these. There are too many other variables -- you can't assume that everyone in the Shabbos block wants a Quiet room, or that everyone on Staff actually wants to be near the Staff Den if they have to choose between that and proximity to function space. == Choose particular blocks In most North American hotels, you will need a Quiet block and an Active (or Party) block at the very least. You will probably want to put all the suites into a block to be allocated by hand.

Choose a room assignment strategy

Which rooms in the hotel will house convention guests? Chances are you have some particular rooms that absolutely must go to the convention -- the Con Suite, at the very minimum, and a few rooms around it to serve as a noise buffer. Chances are the hotel will have some particular rooms -- long-term guests, or any very fancy suites they're not giving you, for instance -- that they will want *not* to go to the convention. Some hotel rooms, in quiet blocks typically, could go to convention or non-convention guests equally well. Allocating more particular rooms lets you make more use of party suites if these are spread among floors. It also lets you separate non-convention guests from quiet-block convention guests if your hotel is concerned about its image. But the more rooms you allocate, the more work you will have later putting together a rooming list, and the more work you will have at runtime to cope with guests who want to check in before their room is ready.

Set up set-asides