Are room blocks with big chains worth it?

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That's helpful to know, and I'm sorry it ended up being a frustrating experience.

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Your experience is what I was expecting! I emailed them back and asked about the price difference, so we'll see what they say. I completely understand that people may be able to find lower prices depending on what deals are around online, but this large a price hike from their own currently published rates seems weird. That's great that your guests are getting a nice discount at this point!

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You're right that with the wedding being during the summer, who knows what their regular rates will look like by the time you get closer. As a guest, I think even $10 off is a nice little bonus!

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I've reached back out with the lower prices I saw on their website and asked about the difference, so we'll see what they say. Being able to have a block where we're not committed to a certain number of rooms is part of the reason we're looking at larger chain hotels, since I think that's less common with smaller/boutique hotels, but reading the contract closely is definitely on my to-do list, especially after this non-discount!

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That's a great deal! Honestly, I'm kind of wondering if they just miscalculated and were off by $100, because $100 less than what they quoted me would actually be a good deal, and a discount of $20-$30 from their current rates. We'll see!

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That's helpful to know, thank you - and I'm sorry it's looking like an unfortunate situation for you! We may be in the same boat, we'll see. I had no idea room blocks varied so much from hotel to hotel.

Yikes, that's a big discrepancy. Hopefully they're willing to budge once they see your email about the currently advertised price being a lot cheaper than their "discounted" rate!

We've had luck so far. One of our hotels is a Courtyard by Marriott and the price we got matches what third party sites are currently advertising for the free cancellation rate (non-refundable ones are $10 cheaper), which is fine. We also have a regular (non-Courtyard) Marriott and the price we have is about $20 cheaper than I'm seeing anywhere else. I'm currently waiting to hear back from a Hyatt for our last hotel and I'm hoping the rate will be decent.

I think the key here is making sure you get a courtesy block and that you aren't on the hook for any unbooked rooms. That way if guests see a better deal elsewhere and book your hotel outside of the block (or even just book a different hotel), you won't have to worry about paying for any rooms you aren't using.

A Courtyard room is not worth that much!

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Right?! That was my thought too!

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I hope they'll revise their quote - fingers crossed! Your experience is more along the lines of what I was expecting, so I was surprised to have this come up. It's good to hear that your experience has been pretty positive! We're definitely only planning to do courtesy blocks, as it's hard to know who will book where, and I don't want worrying about the number of rooms booked to be another source of stress as we're planning.

We went with two Hilton properties. One is a Home2 Suites and seems to be popular so far with guests (we are a ways out). It’s very help yourself with kitchenettes but the cheaper rate and has a shuttle (small). We looked at what rates we could find in August 2020 and the rates seemed cheaper with travel sites, but this hotel wasn’t booking so far out on their site. They offered us a free room with I think each 20 nights booked in our block but said absolutely no more than 30 rooms for the block, 10 at a time, no matter how early we book.
We also went with a Hampton and felt the rates were good and it’s a bit of a nicer hotel that sells drinks (not exactly a bar, from the “pantry”) until 1:30am. We wanted an after party hotel “bar”, so we will actually be staying there. They were more flexible with adding rooms but still not more than 10 at a time.
Both of these hotels are close to free public transportation for the city but doesn’t go to our venue, so we also booked a guest shuttle. Both of the hotels were stingy with the blocks but have been willing to add (but I have to ask how many are booked every so often).
Other hotels in our area seemed to have worse than online pricing or never got back to us (looking at you ALL Marriott hotels who even have my company’s business!!).

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We're running into the same thing - Courtyard will only give us 10 rooms, and I'm hearing crickets from the Hampton Inn so far. I didn't expect this to be such a challenging part of planning!

View Quoted Comment So true! It’s clearly a location-based thing. Our Hampton and the other close-by Hampton got us right in to see the hotels and helped us out!
Just put out feelers to all possible hotels and follow up if you think they’re viable. We gave up on a few hotels we knew were typically more expensive than we wanted.

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Sounds like a plan, thanks for the advice!