Event & Group Housing

Ripe offers an add-on feature to assist with event housing for teams, meetings & conventions, or festivals. Once rates have been contracted with the hotel (we can help do this) we use the Ripe CRS to load negotiated rates & room blocks for the specified hotels.

With the event-specific rates we “block” the pre-set number of rooms for the date range of your event. A single event can have negotiated rates at more than one hotel, offering variety and choice for the traveler. Further, a single hotel can have different negotiated rates, for different events.

Target User

This will be led by the client or affiliate that are promoting or operating the event. The ideal client or affiliate is a small-to-medium sized affiliate in need of supporting an event that doesn’t already have an administrator or service running their event, but they have established a room block and/or rate with a specific property. Rates are configured at the hotel property level. They can then be applied to one or more affiliates.


Example

A weekend soccer tournament is coming to town and has worked with the DMO (Ripe client) to setup an affiliate engine to support bookings. Additionally, they have already negotiated with a hotel to reserve 10 rooms at a discounted rate for the teams and staff. Their typical nightly rate for those days is $125/night, but the negotiated room block is $99. That rate is good until everything is booked or the pre-defined reservation window closes.

  • Once setup Ripe will generate a custom affiliate booking page with the associated rates. Now the players and staff can book directly on the site without ever having to take time to call the hotel.
  • The hotel gets a notification when a reservation is made and that availability is immediately removed from the site in real-time.
  • The hotel is the merchant of record and captures payment at check-in.
  • If the player or team needs to make a change, they can either contact Ripe using the reservation contact info on the site, or through the hotel directly.

Below is an example of how room block rates are presented alongside other properties with with live rates. The rates in pink are live rates & availability from our connectivity partners. The $99 rate in blue is the negotiated rate specific to this event, and only available for the events listing page.