Reserving Hotel Block

You don’t need to pay. You just set up the room block which holds a certain about of rooms so that they are available for your guests to book once you’ve sent out the invitations. Blocking rooms doesn’t cost you anything. Each guest will make and pay for their own reservations.

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Just be careful and make sure to read the contract to see what you are agreeing to. Some hotels tried to put "attrition" clauses in my contract that would hold me responsiblefinacially if not enough rooms were booked. I did not want to be held accountable in the event a majority of people did Airbnb, VRBO, etc. or wanted to stay at another hotel...so I went with another hotel that gave me a "courtesy block" in which I would not be responsible for any unfilled rooms.

The guests pay. Be care not to reserve a block where you are committing to paying for a certain number of rooms.

View Quoted Comment Oh my gosh I didn’t even know this was a thing. I work at the corporate office for hotel brand so I obviously blocked with them and that’s not our policy. I can’t imagine having to pay if a certain number of rooms aren’t picked up. The average pickup rate for our wedding blocks is about 50%. It’s way too hard to predict how many people will stay at the hotel!

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Ya! I was so surprised too but thank goodness for the WW community for giving me the headsup that some hotels would do this so I was prepared! Some of the hotels wanted at least 80% attrition which was CRAZY!

Yes as others said definitely know what you’re agreeing to. I live in a city where hotels don’t do courtesy blocks so I would be financially responsible for rooms not booked!

Each hotel is different. A majority of the time (as pp have said) it will be a courtesy block, where your guest will get a discounted rate until 30 days or so before the wedding. Any rooms left unused to back into hotel inventory, and the discount is no longer available. Also, as pp have said, be careful of attrition clauses. Hotels will try and sneak those in.

I had a weird one where they called it a courtesy block, but required a specific total number of nights to be booked for the block prices to be honored. If the total nights didn't add up to what they required by the time the block expired, everyone would lose the discounted rate and pay the current room rate. Knowing everyone's budget is different, and some would be staying at Air BnB's, some using reward points at other hotels, there was no way I could risk my guests getting stuck paying mid-summer rates when they'd booked months prior. It just seemed so odd to me considering I was only asking for like 8-10 rooms out of 530. Maybe because it was so few rooms, it wasn't worth it to them?

As above. I wouldn't sweat this too much, as unless you are holding your wedding in the hotel, or are having an unusually large number of guests booking hotel rooms, you aren't going to get much of a discount anyway. Book only a courtesy block and if that fills, they may be able to offer you another small block of rooms. If they don't, your guests can likely find an equivalent deal online.