Wedding Guest Accommodations: Hotel Buyouts vs Hotel Room Blocks
You’ve picked your date, found your venue and sent out your wedding invitations. Now comes the hard part — coordinating details for out-of-town guests. For many couples, finding ways to make their guests comfortable during their stay is important; and it all starts with the early planning stages. Here are a few tips for dealing with out-of-town wedding guests:
Hotel Buyouts
If you're looking to reserve rooms for your wedding guests, a hotel buyout may be the way to go. This option gives you access to every single guest room in the hotel. You can elevate the experience by also doing a buyout of the common areas, such as the restaurants, spas, and/or event spaces. Think about it as your personal hotel for your wedding. No outsiders, no unwanted guests. Of course, this is an expensive way to go for you and your guests, but it might make sense if you’re doing a destination wedding, or if most of your guests are coming from out of town. Just remember, if this option is appealing, the key to success in a hotel buyout is early planning — in most cases you’d need to coordinate this with the hotel a year or more in advance.
Hotel Room Blocks
Another option is taking a hotel room block, which allows you to block off a group of rooms at a hotel for your guests to use. This can often be more cost-effective than reserving individual rooms, especially for the guests because the rooms are at fixed, pre-agreed-to rates. And those rooms won’t be made available to the general public unless reservation obligations aren’t met, like filling a certain number of the blocked rooms by a certain date. Again, remember to start planning early and communicate with your hotel of choice to ensure your needs will be met, and you can meet the needs of the hotel too.
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