Travel advisors have long complained when all-inclusive resorts undercut their group rates with deeply discounted, last-minute deals. But advisors may be part of the problem.
Feedback from resorts indicate that about 40% to 70% of an advisor's room block comes back unsold by the booking deadline, said the Destination Wedding & Honeymoon Specialists Association (DWHSA).
Resorts offload that inventory via public channels at a discount, and group guests are then tempted to book lower rates outside the block.
In response to these findings, the DWHSA tasked two high-producing members -- Shelli Nornes, president and CEO of Romance Travel Group in Mankato, Minn., and Kim Goldstein, president of Journeys Inc. in Raleigh, N.C. -- with developing a training video on group contracting.
The free course is available to all U.S. and Canadian advisors at StrategicGroupContracting.com.
Among the key lessons is how to set up the right size room block. According to Nornes, if 200 wedding guests are expected, an inexperienced advisor might request 100 rooms for a week. However, she said, roughly half of expected guests typically show up, and most stay three to four nights, not seven.
With this knowledge, advisors can build a better room block and be "more respectful of the hotel's inventory," Nornes said.
Setting earlier deadlines is another key. Goldstein recommends that advisors set their own deadline that is tighter than the one in the hotel contract. Goldstein said she keeps group bookings open for 90 days after signing the contract, even though the hotels allow a longer booking window.
She said that if agencies return unused inventory 125 days before travel, it's a very tight window for the resorts because most of their independent bookings have been made before then.
Goldstein said advisors who apply her and Nornes' methodology are likely to book 83% to 87% of their room block and release unsold space back to the resort far sooner than industry norms.
Goldstein added that an influx of newer agents entering the destination wedding space makes the training especially timely.
"These contracts are a big deal," she said. "A lot of them are $80,000 to $100,000, and you've really got to understand the whole process."
Technological assistance
Ash Tembe, vice president of global field sales at AIC Hotel Group, which handles sales and marketing for all-inclusive brands including Hard Rock, said the issue isn't exclusively a newcomer problem.
Even experienced advisors can fall into the trap of overblocking, he said, because group reservations have historically been managed manually, with changes requiring back-and-forth phone calls, making it easier for advisors to block extra rooms and nights as a buffer from the start.
AIC has worked to address that problem by allowing advisors to book room blocks via a platform that functions much like an online booking engine, giving guests flexibility to choose their own length of stay and room category within the block and allowing changes up to 60 days before arrival.
Groups can also expand beyond their contracted block size without requiring a new contract, as long as the additional rooms are requested before the deadline. For blocks that are significantly undersold, automatic "room drops" -- in which unsold rooms are released back to the resort's general inventory -- kick in five to seven days before the deadline.
"You don't let them get into trouble," said Tembe. "It just protects the agent if they're not skilled at it."
Tembe said that since AIC began implementing measures like these around 2021, the company's forecasting has improved.
"Our projections have been so much better," he said. "And we've never said no to somebody who wanted an extra room."