Deadlines

^ When we contract with hotels for an event, they provide discounted room rates for our Group and protect the rooms from being booked by another group or by transient (leisure) guests. We, however, are required to fill a certain number of room nights. If we don't fill the agreed upon number, then we pay the difference. While hotels generally offer free cancellation 48 hrs prior, the problem that we have encountered with this model for our Group contracts is that groups within our group, will book blocks of rooms and then cancel the ones they don't need 2 or 3 days prior to the event. These cancelled rooms cannot be resold at the Group Rate because it is past the cut-off date we have agreed to with the hotel, and, even if they could be resold at the Group Rate, there are few conference attendees looking for rooms 48 hrs prior to an event. This results in what is called a "flush". Depending on the amount of the flush, the contracting Group is stuck with the bill for whatever number of rooms fall below the agreed upon minimum. Instead of MSACL paying the option cost for companies or individuals who are unable to decide whether they want to attend, reservations made as part of the MSACL Group are finalized a month in advance. This allows us to account for how many rooms will actually be booked and also provides other potential attendees, who were perhaps unable to secure a Group Room rate if they were sold out, a chance to secure a room at the Group rate before the cut-off date.