Tyra Hilliard, J.D., CMP, assistant professor, meeting & event management at The George Washington University in Washington, DC, suggests the following contract wording to help guarantee your group credit for all attendees at the meeting hotel.

Hotel will use its best efforts to code all Group attendee reservations to the Group block and will ask all persons making reservations to identify whether or not they are with a group prior to finalizing the reservation. Group will encourage attendees to mention the Group name and/or Group reservation code when making reservations.

If Group reasonably believes that all Group attendees have not been coded to the Group room block for purposes of calculating pick-up, an audit will be conducted to compare Group's attendee list with a list of hotel guests in-house over the meeting dates. Representatives from Hotel and Group will conduct this audit together. Both Hotel and Group agree to protect the confidentiality of the other's proprietary information.

All rooms occupied by Group attendees will be credited to the Group room block for pick-up purposes regardless of the sleeping room rate paid.

(Optional Rate Clause) Hotel will not offer sleeping room rates over the Group meeting dates that are lower than the negotiated Group rate unless the lower rate is available for all Group rooms.