Hotel group bookings: block, rooming list and master folio

A hotel group booking is one contract for a block of rooms, usually with meals, sold to a single organiser or agency. The block is held until a cutoff date, the rooming list names who occupies each room, and folio routing decides which charges go to the master account and which to each guest.

Forty rooms arrive at 15:00, the rooming list landed in an inbox the night before with a dozen name changes, and the organiser expects a single invoice. Nothing in the reservation screen shows who pays for the minibar. This guide walks one group from contract to settlement: block and cutoff, rooming list, room assignment, folio routing, identity notification and the final reconciliation. Follow it with a live contract next to you.

What is a hotel group booking, and why does it break the one-guest-one-folio pattern?#

A group booking separates three roles that a single reservation merges: the person who stays, the person who contracts, and the person who pays. That separation is what makes groups hard.

The object is one contract covering several rooms for set dates, usually with board and sometimes meeting space, sold to one organiser: a tour operator, travel agency, company, wedding party or association. Three records must stay in step behind it. The block holds what was sold. The rooming list holds who occupies it. The folios hold who pays for what.

The failure mode is familiar. The block lives in the sales office, the rooming list in an inbox, the folios at the front desk, and nobody reconciles the three until the group is checking out. A name missing from the rooming list is not a missing reservation: it is an unassigned bed inside a block that has already been sold. On the accounting side, one contract can produce one agency invoice and forty guest folios, and the two must add up to the same money.

Manage the group as one record from contract to settlement, and treat every handover between sales, front office and accounting as a place where it breaks. To see where groups sit in the wider operation, read how one hotel business day fits together.

Block or allotment: what should the contract settle before the group arrives?#

A block is rooms held for a named group under a contract; an allotment is inventory opened for a partner to sell from, and rooms leave inventory only when a reservation is made against them. Know which one you are signing.

The distinction matters for reporting as much as for operations. STR's Forward STAR guidance (opens in a new tab) says allotments negotiated with a vendor need not be reported as booked until a reservation is made against them and deducted from inventory. The same guidance notes that booking-status terms such as definite, confirmed, tentative and optional are interpreted in different ways across the industry, so define your terms in the contract rather than relying on the industry's habits.

The cutoff date is the date after which unsold rooms return to general inventory. Any number of days is an example only: the signed contract decides, and the release should be confirmed in writing by a named person. Attrition and cancellation terms set what the group owes if it takes fewer rooms than contracted. Note the accounting treatment: STR's historical benchmarking guidelines (opens in a new tab) put group attrition and cancellation fees charged after the cutoff date into miscellaneous income, not rooms revenue.

No-shows inside a group need a decision too. STR describes a guaranteed no-show as a guest who guaranteed payment and neither cancelled nor arrived, with no room night recorded as sold, and notes that enforcing the guarantee can be discretionary. Decide in the contract whether the organiser or the guest carries it.

Billing and routing instructions belong in the contract, not in an email the week before: what the master account covers, what each guest pays, and who may sign the master folio at departure. Set the deposit and payment schedule, the rooming list deadline, format and name-change deadline.

One more check. If the group is sold as transport plus accommodation at an all-inclusive price lasting more than 24 hours or including an overnight stay, consumer law treats it as a package tour under Article 51 of Law No. 6502. Your contract should match what the organiser has promised the traveler. Before signing at all, run a group displacement analysis: the group may be worth less than the transient business it displaces.

How do you receive and check a rooming list?#

Send the organiser a template you control, require one named sender and a version number, and reconcile the list against the block night by night, not just in total.

Template fields: one row per person, room type, who shares with whom, arrival and departure dates, board, accessibility needs, and a billing flag that says master or individual. Reconcile night by night. For example, forty rooms over three nights is 120 room nights, and a list can be right on the total and wrong on the middle night.

Check the arithmetic of sharing. A twin room with one name is either a single-occupancy charge or a missing person, and the front desk should not have to guess which. Handle late changes through one channel after the deadline, and log each change against the reservation so the final list has a version history. Keep the received list attached to the reservation record rather than loose on a shared drive, so the version you acted on is the version you can produce later.

How do you assign rooms and run arrival day?#

Assign rooms before arrival day, prepare keys and a missing-names list, and check every person's identity at check-in, group or not.

Pre-block by room type from the contract, then map names to rooms once the list is final: floor and building clusters, quiet rooms, connecting rooms for families, accessible rooms held for the guests who need them. Prepare the arrival with one desk or one named person for the group, key packets made up in advance, and a list of who is still missing at any hour.

Identity at check-in is not optional. Law No. 1774 states that facilities obliged to give identity notifications may not accommodate anyone who cannot prove identity with an identity card or another valid official document. The group rate does not exempt anyone.

Reconcile each night, not at the end of the stay: late arrivals, early departures and no-shows change the room-night count the invoice will be built on. The block must be clean and inspected before it is handed to the front desk, using whatever room status codes your property management system uses. Physical constraints are real: luggage storage, lift capacity and breakfast seating all break first when forty rooms arrive in the same hour, so plan them with housekeeping and the restaurant. Brief the night shift on the group's late arrivals, the names still missing, and the routing rules that apply to their charges.

Who sends the identity notification for each group member?#

The facility does, for every person it gives a bed to. The rooming list is not the notification, and the organiser cannot send it on your behalf.

The duty comes from the Identity Notification Law, Law No. 1774 of 1973 (opens in a new tab). It requires the responsible operators of hotels, motels, guesthouses, holiday villages and similar lodging places to keep identity and arrival-departure records, day by day, for everyone they give a bed to, domestic or foreign, paid or free, by day or by night, and to keep them ready for inspection by the general law-enforcement authorities at any time. An additional article of the same law requires every private or public lodging facility to keep all its records on computer day by day and report them to the general law-enforcement authorities instantly.

The practical consequence for groups: each person's identity document is checked at check-in and the notification is sent from the check-in flow, not compiled from the rooming list afterwards. A person who arrives in place of another is a new notification. A person who never arrives is a record that must be closed.

Do not state a tolerance period, a deadline or a penalty figure. The law's wording is day by day and instantly; confirm how it is applied in your province, and any penalty, with your legal adviser. The same law restricts use of the notifications: without a court order, no one other than the authorised official bodies may make use of them. Do not hand notification data to the organiser, however convenient it would be for their own reporting.

Master folio and individual folios: what are the routing rules?#

Routing is a written rule set, one line per charge type, saying whether the charge goes to the master account, the individual guest's folio, or the agency's city ledger.

The common split, described as common practice rather than a standard: room and board per the contract to the master account, everything the guest buys beyond it to the individual folio. Write the routing into the reservation before arrival, so the front desk does not decide at the point of sale with a queue behind the guest.

Spending limits need machinery behind them. If the contract gives each guest an allowance, the system needs the limit and a rule for what happens when it is reached, otherwise the hotel carries the difference. Night audit should check that any charge sitting on a master account has a matching contract line: a charge without one is a dispute waiting to be discovered at departure. The night audit checklist is where this check belongs. Corrections after the fact are voided and reversed, never deleted, and the reversal carries its own reference.

Invoicing the organiser has its own rule. The Revenue Administration (GİB) (opens in a new tab) states that a taxpayer in the e-Arşiv system issues an e-Fatura to buyers registered in the e-Fatura system and an e-Arşiv Fatura to taxpayers not registered in it and to non-taxpayers, delivered on paper or electronically as the buyer requests. Which applies to your agency, and when the invoice is issued, is your accountant's call.

How do you settle the organiser's account and prevent disputes?#

Reconcile while the group is still in the building, get the named person's signature on the master folio at departure, and keep the block, the final rooming list, the routing instructions and the signed folio in one file.

Review the master folio with the organiser's representative on the last full day, when a wrong charge can still be checked against the guest who incurred it. The contract names who may sign: get that signature on the master folio at departure, and record the name and role. Settle in three parts, each with its own document and its own owner in accounting: the master account, the individual balances, and the agency invoice.

Disputes come from three places: charges nobody agreed to, rooms released without written confirmation, and names changed after the list was final. Each is preventable with one written record. Hand accounting a complete file: contract, final rooming list with its version, routing instructions, signed master folio and a note of every change made after arrival. Refer invoice type and timing to your accountant; the legal period applies and e-document rules may set other timings, so no number belongs here. Close the loop by comparing what was contracted with what was consumed, and feed the difference into the next contract with that organiser.

What to do next#

Take the group contract you are working from now and check it answers five things in writing: the cutoff and release rule, the rooming list deadline and format, the routing rules, who signs the master folio, and the invoice details. Fix the gaps before the next group arrives, because every one of them is cheaper to settle on paper than at the front desk.