Selecting a hotel and blocking rooms can be a very time consuming process, especially if your military reunion is large (100+ attendees).
There are many important factors that go into selecting a military reunion hotel including size, staff experience, and group hotel discounts offered.
Group Rates For Hotels In Five Minutes
In order to block hotel rooms for your military reunion, you have to get group rates in the chosen city. Instead of looking for group friendly hotels all over the city, try using our group hotel rates form. Once you enter the details of your military reunion, hotels will email you their group rates, and also offer you additional goodies like free rooms and upgrades for the military reunion planner.
Free Hospitality Suite? Ice For The Bathtub?
When you are filling the form above, make sure to ask whether the hotel is willing to offer a free hospitality suite for your military reunion. A hospitality suite is a room that can be used as a meeting room for attendees to go in and out of as they please. Make military reunions keep snacks and alcoholic beverages in these rooms to encourage people to get together during down time. Pro Tip: Make sure to ask the hotel to place ice in the bathtub to keep those cans cool.
Staff Experience Is A Must
Once you have narrowed your choices down to a few hotels for your military reunion, it is time to take a site tour. Make sure to take two or three people on the site tour to get different points of view. After all, one person might notice that the public restrooms were dirty while another may pick up on another issue.
While on the site tour, you should get an idea of what kind of experience the staff has with military reunions. Are they willing to go above and beyond to make your military reunion successful? Will they offer military themed keycards or a small military reunion flag in every hotel room?
Keep the questions you ask consistent from one hotel to the next to see how different the answers are. Once you are done with the site tours, you should have a good idea of which hotel is most eager to have your business.
Free Shuttle? Free Parking? Close To Shopping?
Transportation costs can eat up a budget like a 14 year old teenager can a fully stocked fridge. If the hotel will offer you free shuttle service to area shopping malls, and other attractions, it will help offset some of your transportation costs. Make sure to ask for it when you are negotiating amenities with the hotel.
Parking is another big cost for attendees and hotel know that. In order to get your business they will throw in the parking for free but you have to ask. Take a look at what a hotel should be offering you.
Proximity To Activities
Another major decision factor is how close the hotel is to area attractions. Take it from us, you do not want to be more than five to ten minutes from all the major areas of interest for your military reunion. If a downtown hotel is near all the activities but costs a few dollars more, then go for it. It will be better for the reunion attendees to be near places they want to visit instead of having to board chartered buses all day.
Is The Staff Hospitable
You can tell how hospitable a staff is during the site tour. Julie Sanger, a sales manager at a 4 star resort adds “At our hotel, all managers present during a site tour were required to come by and introduce themselves. The practice not only wowed to guests, it also showed that our hotel really wanted the business”.
Did You Read The Reviews?
Back in the days before the internet, you had to take the hotels word for how good their service might be. Now, you can take the opinions of millions of travelers who post their hotel reviews on TripAdvisor.com. Before you make that final decision, be sure to look up the reviews to see if they match what you experienced at the hotel. If the two conflict, then you may want to give the hotel a second look to see if you missed something.
Once you have taken a site tour of all the hotels, a final decision can be made relatively quickly.
What Should You Do Next?
If you need a hotel, start by filling out one form and hotels in your desired location will email you their group rates.