Destination Wedding Disasters: How to Protect Your Guests & Why Group Room Blocks are Essential in Emergency Situations

“Why should I book a group room block for my destination wedding?” is in the top 5 destination wedding questions that I receive – and it’s a good one! Booking a group room block often requires contracts, deposits, and has terms, conditions and stipulations that can seem overwhelming and unnecessary, especially for smaller destination wedding groups.

On top of that, there will always be a destination wedding guest (or two) that don’t like the resort that the wedding will be held at, have a friend who said that they can borrow their time-share, prefers a cheaper hotel stay off-site or simply found a “cheap travel deal” online or at a big box travel retailer store.

I have a separate article that goes into detail about the benefits, advantages and disadvantages of group room blocks which you can find HERE. However, I want to focus this article about what happens in the event of a hotel shutdown, evacuation, sale, fire, weather event (like a hurricane!), government-imposed travel restrictions by your destination country or other unforeseen event.

Before you start thinking, “well what are the odds of THAT though?!” or “I’ll be fine, because my wedding isn’t scheduled during a predominantly bad weather month”, I do want to gently point out that the COVID-19 pandemic greatly affected everyone on a global scale and seemed to come from nowhere.

In that same vein, so can hurricanes, floods, volcanoes, fires, blizzards and hotel acquisitions – and yes, I do mean that your hotel could be sold to another owner before your wedding and they may have plans to shut down and renovate! Yikes!

I'm going to warn you now, that this is a relatively a long article. :) There is so much to know and understand which often go overlooked before it's too late. I have gone through many of the above scenarios with clients, and wanted to share one of the latest stories I've encountered with a wedding group just a couple weeks ago... 

Throughout my 11 years of planning destination wedding travel, I've had at LEAST one event per year affect a wedding group of mine and sadly, sometimes 2-3 in a year! Considering that I usually only accept a maximum of 20 weddings per year, so I can dedicate the time and attention required to my couples and their guests, it's statistically high odds that you might be affected by an unforeseen event – which in turn means that your guests will also be affected.

In addition to the coronavirus pandemic affecting all destination wedding couples in some way, one of my wedding groups had to do deal with two separate situations that wreaked havoc on their wedding vacation. While originally, they had done “all of the right things” and booked their wedding well out of hurricane season, when COVID hit, they (along with every other couple, group, and vacationer) had to reschedule due to travel restrictions and hotel closures. Due to the options offered in the early COVID chaos period – the availability was scarce, and they had to select an early October postponement.

Unfortunately, a sizeable hurricane began to head toward the popular tourist region where their wedding was scheduled just a day before travel – while rare, nothing is impossible, and thankfully the hurricane weakened before it made landfall and people in the area had time to evacuate to remain safe. The resort the wedding group was scheduled to arrive at, sustained damage and had to cease operation for repairs. The guests who were already staying at the resort, and those who were scheduled to arrive in the next few days (such as my wedding group!) were all diverted to a sister resort that had not been impacted by the hurricane.

What I really want to do, is give you a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what happens to a destination wedding group during an unforeseen emergency. Below will outline three ways your guests may make their room reservation to attend your wedding, and everything to think about BEFORE they do, just in case something like the above scenarios may happen to you, perish the thought!

The group mentioned above was comprised of wedding guests who booked in the following three ways:

1. Booking Style #1: Within the group room block, through the couple’s destination wedding travel agent (in this case, myself, Haley Davis, owner and founder of Destinations HD Boutique Travel Agency).
   
   
2. Booking Style #2: On their own, at the same resort, but through a different travel service provider via an online booking engine.
   
   
3. Booking Style #3: On their own, but at a different accommodations option altogether – be it  a rental property, alternate resort, time-share, etc... These guests of course, would not be able to spend time with the group staying on property, but instead had plans to purchase resort “wedding day passes” to attend the wedding events on that day.
   
   

Unfortunately, the reality of the experiences, outcomes, and even the ability to attend the wedding itself, were very different for the wedding guests and members of the wedding party depending on how they actually booked. It was an unfortunate lesson that many guests had to learn the hard way. I felt it was a good lesson to share to ensure you understand what could happen if things don’t go as planned.

Booking Style #1
It probably goes without saying that if you book with the travel agent and within a group room block that you’re likely to fare better, but let me share the specific reasons why...

1. Destination Wedding Travel Agents have personal relationships with at least 3 different people involved in your wedding! They have a relationship with the wedding coordinator, the resort business development manager, and the group contract manager who assists with negotiating your contract. This means that a destination wedding travel specialist is likely to get advance notification of resort closures, evacuations, etc... which in turn means that they can pass on this information to you and your wedding guests as soon as internal decisions are made.
   
   
2. When you are booked at a hotel within a group, the hotel will ensure that the group is kept together – so if they need to move the group to a sister resort and they have four sister resorts in the area, the guests who are booked within the group will all be re-routed to the same resort.
   
   
3. Logistics: When your property gets evacuated or your group gets moved you have a new problem – what about your flights and ground transportation?? Wedding guests who are booked in a group room block won’t need to worry about it – as the destination wedding specialist travel advisor that is taking care of your group, will be rearranging, rerouting and regrouping everyone – so that all you have to do is remember to pack your carry on with essentials so that you can drop your luggage when you arrive and head to the pool for a nap while your group coordinator, travel agent, wedding coordinator and the hotel work on getting all of the logistics reorganized!

 
Booking Style #2
These guests are often wary of “contracts”, travel advisors, and are savvy personal vacation planners who may have simply found a promotional deal through a third-party travel retailer. While there is nothing wrong with that, should an unforeseen emergency arise, they are often left with the following problems:

1. Late notification (if any) of resort closure. It’s sad but true, with limited staffing and the DIY nature of online booking sites, it doesn’t permit for individualized and personal notifications in the event of emergencies concerning your hotel. As such, it is highly unlikely that those guests will ever receive personal communication from an Expedia representative to inform them they are being rerouted to an alternate hotel. Eventually, those individuals are likely to receive a generic email – but if the emergency is a matter of days or hours before their flight, they could miss important details as they are preparing to or already traveling to the destination.
   
   SIDE NOTE: Most events causing resort closures won’t necessary be easy to find either – as hoteliers make their first announcement within the travel industry community as soon as they are able, which is released by their corporate offices, before releasing to public. The hotel leaves it up to the travel companies to pass along the news to clients with reservations. This goes back to the above point, that outside bookings may never get notified or know what is happening until after arrival.
   
   
2. No Group Guarantee. When booking outside the wedding group, there is absolutely no guarantee that these guests will be moved to the same resort that the group block is being transferred to. As far as the hotel is concerned, they are individual vacationers and have no idea they are part of the wedding. In the midst of trying to appease ALL guests and keep ALL guests safe, the hotel most likely won’t have time to take personal requests about hotel preferences. Most guests aren’t notified until arrival when events like a hurricane occur, so may be transferred without knowledge to an alternate hotel.
   
   The terms and conditions for traveling, and the contract that one enters into when booking through a chosen online or big box travel agency, could be different than those contracted within the group room block, and as such, those other companies may have different hotels contracted that will house their clients should anything affect their travel or when overbooking. These outside reservations are likely to receive very different treatment if not booked under the wedding group – whether they are the mother of the bride or a daughter! Booking through a third-party supplier can be risky when it comes to important events like a wedding or other group celebrations when you want everyone to be together.
   
   
3. Logistics – Hold times have been unusually longer since the COVID-19 pandemic impacted global travel, and they are significantly higher during any unforeseen event which affects travelers such as weather events. If one of these disturbs your wedding group travel plans, and those outside guests that may have received late notice about a hotel closure or evacuation, they may find it difficult to reschedule both air and ground transportation between the airport and hotel – if they are even able to do so at all before arriving.

 
Booking Style #3
The most risky, whether there is an unforeseen event or not, but especially in the case of a destination wedding group moving locations due to an emergency. Should something happen, these guests that decided to stay off-resort often have no recourse at all – whether prompt or otherwise.
​

1. Receiving notification may be iffy at best, but in majority of cases, unlikely altogether – particularly (and most importantly) about the resort where the wedding is being held. In this case, the wedding attendee(s) will need to monitor not only their own travel accommodation, but also that of the hotel the wedding is scheduled at – otherwise these guests may arrive to no accommodation and no idea where the rest of the wedding group went! As the wedding couple, you'll now have the added stress to also keep all those guests outside the group informed of the situation at hand and as things develop, in addition to preparing for your own travels.
   
   
2. No vacancy. As these guests are booked at outside accommodations, it’s extremely unlikely your resort will have any last minute availabity for outside guests to book. Since the hotel transfers all their guests affected to other properties, those rooms will likely be full due to the movement of other groups and guests. External requests will likely be out of luck in sourcing space during an emergency – particularly if the emergency was related to a weather event, in which case not only are hotel occupants affected, but the entire population of the region.
   
   Another good point to ponder is even if your hotel is impacted, the hotel, house or other accommodation that some guests booked on their own may not have been, and they may not be able to get out of their stay to try and find something closer to your new location. That is even if they will be allowed in at your new property (see section for Day Passes below for more explanation).
   
   
3. Air and ground transportation may be sparse and commandeered by those who had solidified bookings via a reputed provider – for those who planned on “winging it” and taking a taxi or uber service from the airport, they may be in for quite high fares, if even available – especially if the wedding group has been moved to a location that is a significant distance further from the airport than initially scheduled to be.

Day Passes
As regular readers and clients of mine will already know, I would never recommend counting on purchasing a resort day pass to attend a destination wedding – too much can go wrong here.

You can read more about why here. However, in the event of a situation that requires guests to be moved to a different property, the reason is simple:
​

• It's likely that the resort will NOT have any day passes available. Accommodating hundreds of new people who were meant to be at one resort, to another resort which presumably already had their own bookings, means that it’s highly probably that the resort will be filled to capacity now. When the resort is at capacity, no day passes can be sold due to local safety and fire code laws.

 
Refunds or Partial Refunds
This is a hot topic and an important one when facing emergency situations that require a change in plans and accommodation. Unfortunately, force majeure events are not usually covered in any travel package terms and conditions – this is where travel insurance becomes a vital backup.

While travel insurance policies have their own terms and conditions, oftentimes you’ll find that you are usually covered for reimbursement of some, if not all, expenses incurred in an emergency situation*.
*For specific terms, conditions, and coverage policy details you will need to reach out to your preferred travel insurance provider to discuss. 

Most hotels and airlines are not required to reimburse you in anyway or to “make up” for the fact that an event impacted your trip, so if provider offers anything at all, is usually in the faith of good customer service, but not all companies will make exceptions.

With that in mind, if you are booked with a group who has entered into a group room block contract and has a travel advisor on your side, you’ll tend to find that the travel agent will advocate on your behalf for possible partial refunds or additional comps, perks and amenities for the trip interruption that you faced. Online or big box travel retailers do not provide these services and the single traveler is unlikely to get far when asking for favors – the simple truth is that a good destination wedding travel agent already has a relationship with the right people in addition to being likely to promote and sell the resort in the future for groups and as such, will have more chance of using that leverage to your advantage.

What to Expect If Disaster Strikes
Understanding the behind-the-scenes details when disaster strikes (whether it be natural, managerial, or accidental), can help better appreciate why it can appear that resorts are slow to act.

In the example of any disaster, the safety of the guests and staff comes first, and their comfort second. The order in which this works is also tied to guests already on property and then transitions to guests who are scheduled to arrive next and so on – but priority is always given to those guests who are currently at the hotel. During this time staff are overwhelmed with moving guests to safety, securing the grounds and retrieving guest belongings from the rooms to forward on to the new property - just to name a few.

This flurry of activity often results in delayed check-in and room allocation at the new property as the staff works with accommodating the influx of new guests and belongings that they were not prepared for. This can take quite some time especially as the staff navigates displaced guests and groups and attempts to accommodate all the special requests that were included in the original booking, as they transfer essential details into their computer systems – all while continuing to manage the property and the guests currently in place and who were scheduled to arrive.

The best thing that you can do is be patient, flexible, and enjoy the resort amenities while you let the resort staff tackle the monumental task at hand – remember, they want you to be safe, happy and to have a wonderful vacation, so they are doing all that they can to ensure that you leave with a positive experience! 

I hope you found some valuable information to help you understand the importance of protecting your destination wedding and your guests with a group room block. If you feel overwhelmed or would like assistance to navigate contract negotiations, we are here for you! This is what we do every day!

We spend most of our vacation time touring resorts, meeting with the wedding coordinators and training for destination weddings, so we can make it very simple for you. We save you time by filtering out all the bad advice and countless options for you. Let us take the guesswork out and match-make you to the destination and resorts that fit your style, vision and budget the best.

​Together we will find your most perfect wedding resort and we take care of the logistics after that. All you have to do is the fun wedding planning and creating an unforgettable event your friend and family will remember for a lifetime! Schedule your free consultation to see how we can assist and learn more about our services!