Hotels and rooming
Rooming is the part everyone dreads: a spreadsheet, a cutoff date, and forty people with opinions. This page walks through the whole thing, from the block you contracted to the confirmation numbers landing on each person’s phone.
Three different hotel screens
It helps to know which is which.
| Screen | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Company → Hotels | Your address book of hotels you use. Picking one on an event fills in its details |
| An event’s Hotel tab | Everything about the hotel for this event — rates, contract, shuttle, cutoff |
| An event’s Rooming tab | The room block and who is in which room |
The event’s Hotel tab
Open the event and press Hotel. The rows here are all editable in place — click one and type.
- Address, Phone, Onsite contact
- Staff rate and Attendee rate
- Booking link — the hotel’s own reservation page
- Shuttle, To venue, To airport
- Rooming list due — the cutoff date, with a Rooming board ↗ link beside it
There is a Contract card on the right. Upload the signed hotel contract as a PDF and the key terms are pulled out for you and shown underneath. Those terms then pre-fill the room block on the Rooming tab, so you are not retyping the rate and the cutoff.
History with this hotel builds up over seasons, so next year you can see what you paid last year.
Set up the room block
A room block is the batch of rooms you contracted at one hotel for one event. Go to the event’s Rooming tab and press Set up room block.
- Name the hotel
Hotel is required. Confirmation # is the group block number the hotel gave you.
- Put in the money and the dates
Rate / night ($), Block check-in, Block check-out.
- Set the cutoff and the size
Names due (cutoff) is the date the hotel needs your list by. Rooms in block is how many rooms you contracted.
Get the cutoff right. It is the date the whole rest of this page runs on.
- Say who pays
Billing — either Individual folios or Master account.
- Add anything the hotel should know
Notes for the hotel — late check-out for the load-out crew, that sort of thing. Then press Add block.
When the block is filled in from the contract you will see: Prefilled from the uploaded hotel contract — check the numbers before saving. Do check. Contracts are not always clear.
Each block card shows where it stands with a three-step tracker: Draft → Sent to hotel → Confirmations received. There is also a cutoff chip reading Names due in 12d, Cutoff is today, or Cutoff passed 3d ago.
Build the rooming list
The Rooming tab has a pool at the top headed Needs a room, and rooms below it.
Let it pair everyone first
- Press Draft rooming list
It pairs everyone up automatically, using their stated roommate preferences first, then gender, then closest age. Judges are kept separate from the people they judge.
- Read what it proposed
A box headed Proposed rooming shows the suggested pairs, with a note explaining how it decided. Untick any pairing you do not want — Unchecked rooms are treated as rejected pairings.
- Ask for changes in plain English
There is a box where you can type things like put Alexis with Crystal or give the judges solo rooms, then press Revise with AI.
- Create the rooms
Choose which block they belong to under Put these rooms in block, then press Create {number} rooms.
Or do it by hand
Press Add room to make an empty room. Then either:
- Drag a person’s chip from the Needs a room pool onto a room, or
- Press + Add someone — or drag from the pool inside an empty room, or
- Use the small menu on a person’s chip and choose Assign to…
Dragging and the menus do exactly the same thing, so use whichever suits your hands.
A group headed Local — no room by default collects anyone within about 50 miles of the venue. Drag anyone into a room if they still need one. They are not forgotten; they are just not automatically given a bed.
Two warnings to look out for
Rooms show an amber triangle in two situations:
- {Name} shouldn’t room with judges — a conflict of interest.
- Mixed genders — double-check
Both are advisories. The system will let you save either one, because sometimes you have a good reason. It is telling you to look, not telling you no.
Editing a room
Click a room’s title to open Edit room. You get Label, Room type (free text — Double queen, king, suite…), Hotel block, Special requests (Accessible room, high floor, early check-in…), and Status — Pending, Confirmed by hotel, or Cancelled.
You can also set an individual’s own dates. Click the dates chip on their name for {Name}'s stay, with Check-in, Check-out, and a Use event dates button to put it back to normal.
Send the list to the hotel
Press Send to hotel. The box is titled Send the rooming list to {hotel} and it is three numbered steps.
- Download the list
Hotels almost always want Excel. Press Excel (.xlsx) or CSV.
- Email it over
There is a pre-written email draft in the box. Edit it however you like, then press Copy email draft. Paste it into your own email, attach the file you just downloaded, and send.
- Log it
Come back and press Mark as sent to hotel. The block moves to Sent to hotel and records the date and time.
This is deliberate. Email cannot carry an attachment from inside a web page, and the hotel needs the file. So it is download, paste, send, then log it.
That last step matters — it is what tells your team the list has gone.
If the list changes afterwards
Once a list has been sent it locks. To change it, press Edit list on the block. A banner appears: changes save as you go and get bundled into one update notice when you finish.
When you are done, press Done editing. The button then reads Send update, and the email draft is pre-written with everything that changed since the last send.
Confirmation numbers
When the hotel emails back with a confirmation number for each room, do not type them in one at a time.
- Press Add confirmation numbers
It says: Paste their email below, or upload whatever they sent back — spreadsheet, CSV, or PDF.
- Give it whatever they sent
Paste the email, or press Upload their file. Then press Match it up.
- Check the matches
You get a summary like Found 24 guest rows — 12 rooms matched. Anything it could not place is listed under Couldn’t match for you to handle by hand.
- Press Confirm {number} rooms
The rooms move to confirmed, and each person’s confirmation number appears in their own staff portal.
Once confirmations are in, your staff open their phone, tap the event, and see their room, who they are sharing with, and their confirmation number. That is a whole category of Friday-night phone calls gone.
Printing and exporting
Press Export for a box headed Export rooming list with three choices:
- Excel — what hotel group desks want
- CSV — plain data for anything else
- Print / PDF — formatted page, save as PDF
You choose which Columns to include: Last Name, First Name, Role, Arrival, Departure, Room, Room Type, Sharing With, Special Requests, and Billing.
For the printed version you also pick a Layout — Guest table (hotel style) or Grouped by room — and whether to put your Company logo in the header.
What to do next
- Booking links — let attendees book their own rooms from your website.
- Ground and freight — getting everyone from the airport to the hotel.