A group booking is one commercial agreement that becomes many stays. The contract is signed with one person (a tour operator, a company, a wedding planner), but the hotel checks in twenty, fifty, two hundred individual guests. The rooming list is the bridge between the two.
The lifecycle of a group
- Quote. Number of rooms per night, room types, rate, meal plan, what is included.
- Block. Rooms are held for the group. They are not sold to anyone else, but they are not yet assigned to guests.
- Cut-off date. The date by which the group must send names. After it, unclaimed rooms go back to general sale.
- Rooming list. Names arrive and each held room becomes a real reservation.
- Stay. Check-in is usually in waves: pre-assigned rooms and pre-printed key cards save an hour at the desk.
- Billing. Room and tax on the master folio (the organiser pays), extras on individual folios (each guest pays), unless the contract says otherwise.
What a good rooming list contains
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Room type | Double and twin are not interchangeable for two colleagues |
| Arrival and departure per room | Groups often have early leavers and late arrivals |
| Guest names, as on ID | Needed for registration and police reporting in many countries |
| Billing instruction | Master or individual: the most common dispute at check-out |
| Notes | Accessibility, dietary needs, VIPs |
Attrition: the clause that protects the hotel
Attrition is how many rooms the group can release without paying. A typical clause: up to 10% of the block can be released until the cut-off date without penalty; after that, released rooms are charged at a percentage of the rate.
Example: a block of 40 rooms x 3 nights at EUR 95. The group releases 8 rooms after cut-off. Allowed attrition is 10% = 4 rooms. The 4 extra rooms x 3 nights are charged at 80%: 4 x 3 x 95 x 0.8 = EUR 912. Without the clause in the contract and in the system, that is EUR 912 nobody invoices.
Master folio vs individual folio
Decide it per charge type, not per guest: "room and breakfast to master, everything else to the guest" is the most common split. The PMS must route each posting automatically; doing it by hand at check-out is how a EUR 40 dinner ends up on the organiser's invoice.
Common mistakes
- ●Holding rooms without a cut-off date: they stay blocked until the day of arrival and are lost to direct sale.
- ●Accepting a rooming list by email and retyping it: import it. Typing 60 names is 60 chances to misspell a passport name.
- ●One reservation for the whole group: occupancy, housekeeping and city tax all need one stay per room.
FrontDesk handles groups as one object with its rooms: paste or upload the agency's rooming list CSV (with per-row error preview), set the master reservation, move charges to the master folio in one click, and check the group in or out together (it stops on rooms with an open balance).
Simple hotel property management software for independent hotels, chains and groups.