Negotiate with a Hotel

Hotels can be expensive for almost all of their services, especially if you are doing things in groups. These things can include renting multiple rooms for your group, renting a dining hall for a reception/party and having said reception/party catered by the hotel restaurant. However, if you are willing to put yourself out there just a little bit you can negotiate with the hotel. After all the worst they can say is no and risk losing your business. The following are ways that you can negotiate with the hotel to get yourself and your group a better deal.

Hosting a reception/party:

When hosting a reception or a party at a hotel the rental of the banquet room can really add up. After all not only do you have to pay for the use of this room but you will also have to pay for entertainment and catering. One way that I have found that I can get a hotel to reduce or completely eliminate the room rental fee is to have them cater the event. What I do is ask them about their catering and then once I have them talking about their catering I will then ask them what kind of deal can they work me on the room rental fee if I have them cater. The thing is though is that in most situations you do not have to use their restaurant for the catering of your event. The hotel knows this and knows that if you have enough people attending then they will make more money by ensuring that you have them cater. So for them it is sometimes better to reduce or eliminate the banquet room rental fee in favor of you paying for their catering service.

Since you will need both the room and the catering it is cheaper for you to have them cater if they reduce or eliminate the room rental fee. They look at the prospect of making more money while you actually save money by not going with someone else for the catering. If the hotel will not go for it and you can live with using a different hotel then move on to the next hotel.

I was originally going to have Holiday Inn host my party but with the room rental fee they were charging and then having to pay a caterer I just could not afford to do it. I move on and called my local Ramada Inn and the room rental fee was $450 but they said that if I had them cater they would drop the room rental fee completely and all I would have to pay is for the catering service. In addition I got the whole ballroom offered up for my party and could have it all day and night for only the price of the catered food.

Children's Prices for Catering:

One thing that I discovered was that when talking with caters or the hotel manager about catering prices they will give you one price per person. I was quoted by Ramada, $12 per person for the party and this included roast beef, lemon peppered chicken, two vegetables, dinner rolls, a salad bar, coffee and tea on the buffet. This was a nice change from the $25 per person that I was quoted by an outside caterer. In addition after all I was not going to have to pay the room rental for the ballroom. However, I was going to be having a good deal of children there and little ones do not eat that much. So I asked her on one of our sit downs just what the price for children's plates was. At first she just looked at me and then quickly started talking and throwing numbers out there. The new pricing that I got was $8 per plate for children's plates for kids ages 3 to 12. Any child under 3 was free and the adult pricing started at age 13. She was never going to give me a smaller pricing for the children until I asked.

Group room rates:

The price of a hotel room in today's economy is not always possible for everyone in your group. The best thing to do is negotiate with the hotel on the pricing of their rooms. This simply falls under "ask and ye shall receive". Hotels know that when they are in an area with other competing hotels that the best way to obtain your business is to try and offer you the best deal. Therefore when calling and discussing group rates simply ask them what kind of deal they can make you the rates of the rooms for your group. Before doing this though make sure you know exactly how many people to expect and how many rooms you will be needing. At best throw out a higher ball park figure that is close to what you expect, this way you are not shorting your group on rooms but still have a good number to work with when negotiating with the hotel.

As you can see one of the best forms of negotiating with a hotel is simply asking for what you want. Want a group rate on rooms for the night to accommodate your group? Then ask for it. Want them to comp you something for allowing them to cater your event? Then ask for it. Do not be insulting or pompous when dealing with a hotel, this will get you no where. At the same time do not be shy or unsure of yourself as confidence will make them want to work toward obtaining your business.