For conferences and corporate events with travelling attendees, accommodation can quickly become another sizeable job. Organising rooms as a group can make the experience easier for guests, simplify logistics and give planners one less moving part to manage.
Here’s why group accommodation is worth sorting alongside your venue.
Keep everyone close to the event
Location matters just as much for your accommodation as it does for your venue.
Keeping attendees at the venue itself or in a nearby hotel means less time navigating an unfamiliar city, fewer complicated journeys and a much easier start to the day. That’s a boon for multi-day conferences, where delegates may be travelling between their accommodation and the event several times.
It’s also worth considering the experience from the attendee’s perspective. If someone has already booked flights and cleared several days in their calendar, giving them a convenient group accommodation option is one less decision they need to make.
Make the most of booking as a group
Sending everyone off to book their own room may mean they’ll encounter different prices, availability and cancellation terms and potentially end up scattered across the city.
Booking as a group can provide access to room blocks, group or conference rates and other benefits, depending on the hotel and size of the booking. It also gives attendees a straightforward option that has already been considered in relation to the event.
For planners, that means fewer individual accommodation questions landing in your inbox. Always a welcome bonus.
Your logistics become much simpler
Accommodation affects more than where everyone sleeps.
If delegates are staying in one hotel or a small number of properties, airport transfers, coaches and transport to the venue become much easier to organise. You know where people are starting from, attendees know where they need to be and you’re not trying to coordinate pickups from ten different corners of the city.
This is particularly useful when you’re managing interstate or international delegates, speakers or VIPs who may be unfamiliar with the destination.
It keeps the group together beyond the conference
Some of the most productive conversations at a corporate event happen when nobody is holding a microphone.
Keeping attendees together gives them more opportunities to connect outside the formal programme, whether that’s over breakfast before the first session or drinks once the day wraps up.
For conferences, retreats and multi-day events, the hotel can become an extension of the event itself. That doesn’t mean scheduling another compulsory networking activity at 8pm. Sometimes simply putting everyone in the same place does the job.
It makes budgeting easier, too
Accommodation can represent a significant part of the overall cost of an event, particularly when you’re bringing together a large group or organising multiple nights.
Looking at accommodation collectively gives planners a clearer picture of those costs earlier in the process. It also makes it easier to compare suitable options based on the things that actually matter to your event: location, room requirements, budget and availability, rather than dealing with individual bookings later.
The benefits of group accommodation are fairly straightforward. Finding and coordinating it while you’re already planning an event is the less appealing part.
That’s where Venue Crew can help.
Alongside helping you find and book the right venue, you can now request Venue Crew’s help sorting out group accommodation for your event or conference too.
Instead of beginning another hotel search once the venue is locked in, you can bring your group accommodation requirements into the same conversation, meaning fewer separate enquiries, less back-and-forth and one less piece of the event for you to organise yourself.
Feeling overwhelmed by the venue hunt? Our friendly Venue Specialists are here to help — get in touch with them today.
