Travel Advisors Fight to Fix Group Booking Policies Amid Rising Challenges

Imagine waking up to a dozen emails from destination wedding guests asking you to cancel their room block reservations – because they want to book direct for a Thanksgiving sale. 

Cheryl Bailey, owner of Yellow Umbrella Events in Texas, dealt with this scenario last year. Once she confirmed that the online rates were lower than the rates offered for her block, she contacted the resort to try and keep the guests in the wedding group with the better rate.  

She was told to wait a week for a response, so she went forward with canceling the entire group and rebooking each guest individually, resulting in the loss of a deposit and comps for the bride. Bailey only recouped her original commission by upselling the rest of the guests, who she booked in better room categories at the same (discounted) cost. 

“If it were my wedding, I would have canceled that group in a heartbeat,” Bailey said. “But their deposit, their room comps, their cocktail party, the room upgrades, everything connected to their wedding was lost so that their guests can have this lower rate.” 

This is just one example of the challenges mounting for travel advisors booking large groups at resorts. In an October 2024 survey, Destination Wedding & Honeymoon Specialists Association (DWHSA) found that 95% of its members lost group bookings due to guests booking direct. 

Travel advisors with DWHSA are now stepping up to try and remedy the situation with the hotel companies. 

Addressing Group Booking Problems

The DWHSA has been holding 90-minute one-on-one meetings with hotel brands to discuss a growing list of group booking policies that they’d like to see modified. In late 2024, DWHSA members met with executives from 16 all-inclusive resort brands – including AIC Hotel Group, Hilton All Inclusive, Lomas Hospitality, and Hoteles Xcaret – to formally address the issues.   

“This is really a story of unintended consequences. We don’t think for a minute that there are any resort companies out there that are out to push [travel advisors] out of the group space,” said John Hawks, executive director of DWHSA. “What happened coming out of Covid is everybody – agents and suppliers alike – we were all scrambling to get that cashflow back. For a lot of the resort companies, they were making little contract changes here and little policy changes there, so that over time has just grown into a thicket of issues for agents trying to put groups together.” 

Some of the policies that DWHSA is targeting include guests being unable to earn loyalty points when booking in a block, high deposit rates, not charging event fees to guests who book direct, strict minimum night stay requirements, and early final payment dates. 

Michael Goines, owner of MD Luxury Travel in North Carolina, shared that he often pays out of his commission for transportation upgrades in order to keep wedding guests in a room block. 

“We all have stories [about] how these topics have impacted our businesses,” said Shelli Nornes, president and CEO of Shelli Nornes of Romance Travel Group in Minnesota. “We get creative, and we work around it, but we’re finally coming together and talking about them and getting a little bit more organized so that we can address them professionally with the hotels that we’re working with.” 

Next Steps & Upcoming Training for Advisors

DWHSA plans to meet with a total of 39 different resort brands about these issues. TMR contacted Hyatt and Hilton about the meetings, but the companies did not respond to the request for comment in time for publication.

According to Nornes, the Zoom calls have been productive because the travel advisors acknowledge there is work to be done on their end, as well. For example, some newer advisors may reserve too many rooms in their block, leaving hotels to fill inventory last-minute.

Nornes and Kim Goldstein, president of Journeys Inc. in Virginia, will organize a training program this spring for travel advisors to learn best practices for booking groups. These trainings will be rolled out in partnership with tour operators sometime in the spring. 

In addition, DWHSA will host a “Group Booking Summit” in Miami on Feb. 26. Members of DWHSA’s Group Booking Issues Committee, comprised of top-selling travel advisors, will meet with resort executives to workshop sample contract language and policy changes that address their issues.

DWHSA plans to release a public report on the conclusions of the meeting, then follow up with all 39 resort brands in the 12 to 18 months that follow to ensure that progress is made.