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.
Two 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; click a hotel to open its record — details, the standing note, past stays, and what earlier debriefs taught you about it |
| An event’s Hotel & Rooming tab | Everything about the hotel for this event — rates, contract, shuttle, cutoff — and the room block and who is in which room |
They are one now. The contract tells you how many rooms your staff block holds, and that block is the thing you room people into — keeping them apart just meant flipping back and forth. Old Rooming links and bookmarks still work; they take you to the same place.
The Hotel & Rooming tab, top to bottom
Open the event and press Hotel & Rooming. The page reads in the order the work happens.
1. The hotel your staff sleep in
The rows on the left are all editable in place — click one and type.
- Address, Phone, Onsite contact
- Staff rate
- Shuttle, To venue, To airport
- Rooming list due — the cutoff date, with a Rooming board ↓ link that jumps you down the page
There is a Contract card beside it. 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 further down the page, so you are not retyping the rate and the cutoff.
When the contract holds two blocks you get a row each — Staff block and Attendee block — and the room block pre-fills from the staff one, because that is the block you are rooming people into. A contract that never separates the two shows a single Room block row instead; it is not assumed to be yours. You also get Breakfast (Comp or Not comp) and, when the contract negotiated one, Early staff breakfast with the times.
Under the hotel card sits What we learned here — every fact an earlier debrief pinned to this hotel (no early check-in, ever; the shuttle needs 48 hours’ notice), newest first, each saying which event taught it. It only appears when the hotel is in your directory, and it fills up over seasons; see Debriefs and what you learned for how answers get pinned there.
2. The nudge in the middle
If your contract names a staff block and you have not set one up yet, a line sits between the contract and the board: The contract shows a 12-room staff block — set up your rooming list? The button opens the block form already filled in from the contract.
Once the block exists but has no rooms, the same spot points you at the quickest way to get some: Create the remaining rooms on the block card while the block is still a draft with a room count, otherwise Draft rooming list to pair everyone automatically or Add room to build the list by hand. Once there are rooms, it goes quiet and the board’s own draft nudge takes over.
3. The board, 4. Attendee hotels, 5. Reference
The rooming board is the middle of the page — everything from here down in this guide. Below it sits Attendee hotels, and below that a folded-up Hotel reference section holding History with this hotel (which builds up over seasons, so next year you can see what you paid last year), any related playbooks, and the carried-forward note from your hotel directory. Press Expand when you want it.
Set up the room block
A room block is the batch of rooms you contracted at one hotel for one event. Scroll to Rooming on the Hotel & 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. Staff block (rooms) is how many rooms your own crew holds — not the attendee block. Most contracts hold both, and this board is only about your staff. If the staff count varies by night (8 Thursday, 12 Friday through Sunday), put in the largest night: 12.
Get the cutoff right. It is the date the whole rest of this page runs on.
- List the room types (optional)
Room types is the mix of rooms the block holds — 20 Double, 10 King, 2 Suite. Press Add room type, pick a type or type the hotel’s own name, and put the number of rooms beside it; leave the number blank if you don’t know it yet. Under the rows you will see how many rooms they add up to next to the staff block’s size. Leave the section empty if you don’t need it — the block works exactly the same without it.
When the uploaded contract lists room types, the rows arrive filled in, each marked with a sparkle and the contract’s own words quoted underneath. Check the counts before saving.
- 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.
Saving a block with a staff-block size creates that many empty rooms for you — Room 1 through Room 12 — so you can start dragging people in straight away rather than pressing Add room twelve times. (It stops at 100; add the rest by hand if you ever hold more.)
Each block card shows where it stands with a six-step tracker: Draft → Locked → Update needed → Ready to send → Updates sent → Confirmed. Only the step you are on is spelled out; the ones behind it are ticks and the ones ahead are dots. There is also a cutoff chip reading Names due in 12d, Cutoff is today, or Cutoff passed 3d ago. A block with room types lists them on one line — 20 Double · 10 King · 2 Suite — on the card and above the block’s table in the Sheet view.
If you later raise the size — the block card reads 4/12 rooms used while only four rooms exist — a Create the remaining 8 rooms button appears on the card while it is still a draft. One press and they are there.
Build the rooming list
The board 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.
The room block (as opposed to a room) no longer has a Status dropdown in its edit dialog. Where a block stands is decided by what you actually do to it — Send to hotel, Mark confirmed, and unlocking — so the card can always tell you who did what, and when.
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, and the card says who sent it: Locked · Autumn · Aug 30.
That name is the whole rule. Whoever sent the list to the hotel is the person who approves any later changes to it. Not a job title — the person. They took the list over, they know what the group desk is holding, so they decide what goes back.
If it is your list
Press Edit list on the block. A banner appears: changes save as you go and get bundled into one update notice when you finish. Everything works the way it always has.
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.
If somebody else sent it
The button reads Propose changes instead. Press it and you get the same board, but nothing you do is written yet:
- Move someone with their chip menu, edit a room, change somebody’s dates, add a room — each one is recorded as a request and confirmed with a small message.
- The rooms do not move on screen. That is on purpose: the hotel’s copy has not moved either, so neither has ours. The banner keeps a running list of everything you have asked for.
- Dragging is switched off in this mode, because a chip that flies back to where it started looks like a bug. Use the menus and the room dialogs — they do exactly the same jobs.
Press Done proposing and the batch goes to whoever sent the list, with a notification.
Reviewing what somebody proposed
If it is your list, the block card grows a Review N proposed changes button and the tracker moves to Update needed.
- Open the review
Every proposed change is listed with who asked for it and when. Everything starts ticked.
- Untick anything you don’t want
You can approve some and turn down the rest in one pass, or do it in two.
- Add a note (optional)
It goes back to whoever proposed the changes — hotel is full, keeping Room 4 as is.
- Approve or Reject
Approve actually makes the changes — people move, rooms are renamed, new rooms appear — and the block moves to Ready to send. Reject changes nothing at all. Either way the person who asked gets told.
Then send the update to the hotel the usual way, and the block moves to Updates sent.
If the person who sent the list is unreachable, an admin can open the same review panel. The buttons read Approve N as admin and the panel says out loud that this is an override — and the person who sent the list is notified that it happened. It is a way to keep the weekend moving, not a way around them.
Unlocking a sent list
The lock chip on the block card is also a button, for the person who sent the list and for admins. Pressing it asks first, and the warning is the real one: the hotel is holding a copy that goes stale the moment you change anything.
Confirm and the block goes back to Draft, freely editable by anyone. The record of what has already been sent is kept — unlocking does not un-tell the hotel — and you will need to send the list again afterwards.
Marking it confirmed
Two ways, and you only need one:
- Paste the hotel’s confirmation numbers in (below) and the block flips to Confirmed by itself once every room has one.
- Or, for a hotel that just replies “all set” without a number per room, press Mark confirmed on the card.
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, Position, 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.
Attendee hotels
Everything above is about the hotel your staff sleep in. Attendee hotels, near the bottom of the tab, is the other question you get asked all weekend: where do the families book?
You can list as many as you need — a host property plus two overflow blocks down the street is normal. Press Add hotel and fill in:
- Hotel — the name families will see. Required.
- Rate / night ($) — what they pay, if you negotiated one.
- Booking link — the hotel’s own reservation page, group code and all.
- Note — anything that helps them choose. Overflow block — 4 blocks from the venue.
The up and down arrows on each card set the order. That order is the order the public sees.
Attendee hotels feed your public event page and the booking-link snippet on your own website. With one hotel the public card is headed Host hotel; with several it is headed Hotels and every one gets its own Book your room button. The embedded website snippet shows the first one.
An event that has no attendee hotels listed falls back to the older single Hotel booking link and Attendee rate fields on the Overview tab, so nothing that was already published disappeared.
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.