Hotel Room Blocks

I would offer a variety of room types if you can! Maybe out of every 10 rooms, have at least 5 rooms as each having 2 queen beds, another 3 rooms with each having 1 king bed, and the last two being whatever other type (1 queen bed? 1 queen and 1 king? Etc)? That way, people can pick what room type is the best fit for them.


The hotel I booked for my room block automatically set aside a variety of rooms, I did not get to pick what types. I would check with your hotel - they might already have a system in place for what room types they set aside along with how many of each.

View Quoted Comment

Thank you Lisa! If they don't have a system in place we'll def. ask them if they can do a variety! We just have so many family and friends that will be traveling, and they all vary as far as family size goes!

I blocked with Marriott, and they just blocked off a certain number of rooms to start (30 in my case, but you could have done 10 or 20) and said they would add more if necessary. We didn't specify beds or types of rooms. People specified that when they booked.

We got married at a hotel so they automatically blocked off so many rooms. Some of the rooms were 1 bed and some were 2. I will say we forgot to ask about a handicap room and felt awful because my husband's handicap, but all of their rooms are on the second floor and up so it wasn't like we even had the option to reserve a first floor room which is what the cousin had wanted.

We blocked off both 1- and 2-bed rooms since we weren't sure who would want to share or not. We'll have a lot of out-of-town guests, but our hotel (and most others we talked to) only allowed a certain number of room nights for free (somewhere between 10-20) but will add more rooms to the block once those are reserved.

View Quoted Comment

Thank you Hannah! We're using Hyatt so maybe they'll have a similar process.

View Quoted Comment

Thanks for the response Veronica!

View Quoted Comment

Thanks for the response Marianne!

Our hotel had two types of rooms for our hotel block. One with one king bed and the other with 2 queen beds. This way, your guests can choose what kind of room suits them best. Check with your hotel person. They should be able to tell you what kind of rooms they typically reserve for this.

View Quoted Comment

Thanks for the response Cristy! I figured we'd ask our hotel what their process is, but also wanted to know what everyone else did! Ours comes with about 4 options, so we weren't entirely sure!

All of the rooms be blocked off were 2 queen rooms. This allows people to stay together if they wish and there is no harm in a couple staying in a 2 bed room.

I used to work for Hilton, our hotel started off with 10 rooms (we were a smaller hotel) and it was mostly Kings and then maybe a couple of double queens.

Just make sure you're getting a complimentary room block where after a certain date any unsold rooms in your block are released back into their inventory so you're not on the hook for those blocked rooms.

Our hotel didn't have any minimums for the room block, so we could start off with ten and when you got down to two rooms left we would add a couple more if it was far enough out. However if only one or two rooms were booked that's all that was booked and there was no penalty/fee for you.

You can also ask your hotel if they have an easy booking link (I know Hilton did) where you can paste the link on your wedding website so that your group will automatically be directed to book from the blocked rooms and not have to worry about putting in some kind of code or calling the hotel directly to book.

I use to work for Marriott. It's best for weddings to do a mix king and 2 queens. I would start out with 15 rooms to block off then go from there. You can always add more rooms on later. You can also request updates on how the rooms are booking at anytime.

View Quoted Comment

Good point, thanks Meghan!

View Quoted Comment

Such great advice! We're def. putting the 'reserve by' date on our website, but I never thought about seeing if there was a quick link! Thanks!

View Quoted Comment

Thanks for the response! We have a large number of people traveling so we're looking at a minimum of 20 rooms so far!

View Quoted Comment Courtney, how do you know if a hotel does complimentary room blocks or is that something you would have to call and ask? I don't know if all, or even any of our out of town invites will be coming for sure at this point so we weren't going to do a room block because we didn't want to pay for it if no one came.

View Quoted Comment

I'd pick one hotel and ask them about setting up a room block. Find whichever hotel you like the best and start from there.

Simply asking if there is a minimum amount of bookings required should answer that question. If they require a minimum amount of rooms then it's not a complimentary room block.

Anytime you're setting up a room block you'll have to talk to the hotel's sales department and they'll manually get that set-up for you.

View Quoted Comment Thank you so much!