Who's ROCH and ROB?

By Gary Schirmacher, CMP
Conferon

Today's meetings industry faces many challenges. This is a year where we have experienced some major obstacles including a soft economy, a war, SARS, a blackout and now a major hurricane. The issues of Rooms Outside Contracted Hotels (ROCH) and Rooms Outside the Block (ROB) seem to continue to wreak havoc for both meeting planners and hotels. Associations, Hotels and 3rd Party Planners are working diligently to try and find solutions to the problem of a more web savvy attendee and the fact that there are more hotel rooms available on the web than ever before. Project Attrition, an initiative that includes most major hotel chains and major meeting industry associations, is designed and bring planners and suppliers a "toolbox" of proven solutions to try and protect everyone's interests.

The challenge is complex and organizations are trying to implement many ROCH and ROB strategies. Most encourage a shift in attendee/exhibitor behavior with regard to booking inside the block and at contracted hotels. It's very clear that offering benefits rather than setting penalties works. The benefit must out weigh the cost savings at the ROCH hotel and in most cases the savings has to be at least $150.00 or the attendee will not find enough value to look at booking into the contracted hotel.

Hotels are more flexible than ever with confirming contracted rates that are lower than what the group had originally contracted, however this is not something a group can count on. Two things that have shown high success are; registration fee discounts for staying in the block (Generally the registration is first raised by the same amount that those staying inside the block will save. This keeps the association from losing valuable registration revenue.) and requiring a room to be booked through group housing before an attendee is able to access the registration process. Priority exhibitor points, complimentary floor badges and sponsor validation are working well for many groups to keep sponsors and exhibitors in their contracted room blocks. The best news is that associations that choose these solutions have had very little 'push-back' form attendees or exhibitors.

If the business and leisure travel markets make a come back, room rates will rise thus causing less inventory being placed on the web for sale to consumers and the group rates will again be 'low' by comparison. Many hotel chains are looking at taking back inventory from Internet portals and placing that inventory on their own web page with a "lowest rate" guarantee. Other chains are not providing frequent guest points or stay credit for frequent traveler programs if reservations are made through an Internet portal that is not that chain's web site.

The good news is that group business continues to be a strong market for hotels and it's optimistic to think that group bookings will continue to be the strongest and largest segment for hotels. We are working together as an industry to impact attendee and consumer behavior. The ROCH and ROB topic is a "hot" one. The more we share successes as an industry, noting where organizations have made positive changes that have encouraged attendees/exhibitors to use rooms in the contracted hotels, the bigger the "toolbox" will be for meeting planners and hoteliers to use.