When planning your class reunion, you should keep in mind that 30-40% of your classmates will be coming from out of town according to some estimates. If you keep in mind the potential need for hotel rooms when choosing your locations and events, you can save some serious headaches and hopefully improve the attendance and overall experience for your classmates and their families.

Ideally, when looking at potential dates for your reunion, you’ll do a little research to see if there are any other major events going on during the same time frame. If, for example, there is a big business conference in town, hotel rooms could be scarce.

The best way to ensure a place to stay for your classmates is to reserve blocks of hotel rooms. It is common for a hotel to require a minimum of 10 rooms to be reserved, but you can often get a special rate for your classmates by doing so. At some hotels, when you reserve the block of rooms, you will be given a cut-off date (usually several weeks before the event). Make sure that your classmates know that anyone who reserves before the cut-off date will get the special group rate, but after that date the rooms are no longer guaranteed.

Do your homework, and try to find hotels that are convenient to where your events are being held. At the same time, try and be sensitive to a variety of budgets by offering several different choices. You can compare rates, amenities and other relevant info online.

When you get down to your top-five choices, call and talk to a group sales representative. They can simplify the reservation process and answer you questions you may have about deposits, cancellation policies and more. They may even be able to sweeten the deal for you to get your business.

One last thing: We cannot underestimate the importance of early planning for hotels. The last thing you want is to wait until a month before the event to try and reserve rooms, and find out there is nothing available. That could be disastrous for your attendance, and make for some unhappy classmates.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 3:05 am and is filed under High School Alums. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.