 Meeting planners, if one of your biggest stresses and frustrations is meeting your hotel room block, I may have some ideas that will help your delegates book-book within your host hotel block. Let's look at some best practices today. It's Leanne and each and every day Stephen and I work with our clients to ensure that their hotel contracts have enough flexibility so that they can meet or exceed their hotel room block without falling into attrition. And often it's a guessing game as to how many room nights a client is going to need for their program. Yes, history can help, but when a program moves around, especially from destination to destination, it can often be a struggle to figure out exactly where that sweet spot is for how many guest rooms you need on each evening. And one of the biggest frustrations that meeting planners face now is with discount sites like Travelocity and different Airbnb options around hotels, they can find they lose delegations to things outside of their hotel. And that of course impacts them negatively and could potentially put them into attrition. So today we're going to talk about some strategies on how to encourage your delegates to not only book within the block, but show them how it's in their best interest to do so, and of course will help your association. We're going to look at some tips as well as some incentive tricks that will get them to do that. So here we go. Tip number one, ease of registration. Make sure that all of your reservation methods are crystal clear and that when they're registering for their event, it's a logical path to purchase to get to the hotel section and book their hotel room. By making things easy for them, it'll discourage them from trying to find other avenues for booking their hotel room. Tip number two, offer an early bird prize to those who book at your host hotel. It can be as simple as a spa gift certificate, maybe one of the upgrades that you negotiated during your contract negotiations, something that'll incentivize them for staying at the host hotel. Tip number three, ensure you communicate any registration changes to your host hotel as well. Loop them into the conversation about how housing is going to look on your end and they may be able to help you as well with ease of online links, social media soundbites, whatever it is that you're going to need to communicate it clearly back to your delegates. Tip number four, review all marketing opportunities with your host hotel. So looking at when reservation due dates are going to fall, any early birds that you want to set in your conference registration, review all of that with your hotel so that you're all on the same page about when you'll see spikes in reservations and when you should start to look at pickup reports in history. And that leads us into tip number five, review your pickup often. Now, if you're a client of Stephen and I's, we do this as well. And we also advise you on where you may be falling short compared to years previous, where you may be picking up really healthy and might have to get more guest rooms. So that's part and parcel of our services as well. But just ensure that you're reviewing the pickup regularly starting at about four to five months out from your conference. Tip number six, education. Most of our delegates are not familiar with the meetings industry and the impact that them staying outside the host hotel has on our obligations to our hotel contract. So it's a simple education piece. It could be as simple as outlining what the risk is to the association if they stay away from the host hotel or as elementary as the goals and objectives of your event to have people stay in the host hotel and network after the learning day is over and keep those conversations going. So include an education piece and you may see yourself with more delegates staying at your hotel. Tip number seven, a robust social media strategy. So reach your delegates where they are at and remind them to book their room at the hotel. Include all those reminders about the early bird incentives. Include links where they can go and easily book their hotel room. Create a strategy that can start as far out as a year in advance up to two weeks before your conference about how your host hotel is an integral part of their meeting. Some other quick incentive trips that you might want to use. You can discount their conference registration if they're booking at the host hotel, perhaps for the current conference or even for the conference next year. You can provide a spa gift certificate or any other kind of gift basket or upgrade to incentivize them. Perhaps those who stay at the host hotel will have waived resort fees as opposed to those who book through a third party. And finally, if you have time, perhaps host a small pre-conference reception for those who are staying at the host hotel. I'm sure I've missed some really good tips and tricks on how to get people to stay at the host hotel. If you have any tips and tricks you want to share with the community, please share them below this video. I hope these tips have helped you meet or exceed your current or future room blocks with your host hotels. To learn more about our complimentary services and how we help meeting planners mitigate their risk in their hotel contracts, connect with us here or check out our website at conferencesource.net. Thanks for watching this week's video and we will see you next time. Bye for now.