What It Means:
Hotel Buyouts are growing in popularity especially in the U.S. A buyout means you have complete control of the entire hotel and no guests outside your group can access hotel amenities. This allows for a private party feel and extensive company branding during your entire trip. You can also do a partial buyout which can be one wing of a hotel or a certain building on the property.
What Are the Pros:
Hotel Buyouts are great to help build your company brand. You can brand the hotel lobby, the events and easily provide nightly turn down gifts and other perks to your attendees. I've even seen one company have their company logo displayed in lights on the beach each night for easy viewing from guest rooms. It's a perfect opportunity to grow relationships within the business and a nice perk when focusing on your corporate culture.
With a full buyout the hotel staff is focused only on your company and doing everything they can to make your event successful. Another benefit for companies is the guaranteed privacy during the event which is important if a company is announcing an upcoming IPO, product launch, acquisition, or financial review.
What Are the Cons:
One major con is the cost of a hotel buyout especially if you are only looking at hosting a 3-4 night event. Many hotels will make you cover the cost of 7 nights stay despite only renting for 3 nights. The hotel needs to protect themselves from lost revenue the days before and right after the event. The second con is availability. Many hotels will not sell a buyout during their busy season unless contracted 16-24 months ahead of time as they know they are able to sell out individual rooms during that period and could already have bookings secured.
What It's Best For:
Here are five types of events that buyouts can be a great option:
1: Incentive Events
2: Customer Events
3: Annual Meeting
4: Anniversary Year
5: Acquisition or IPO celebration
If you are looking for an event to blow your customers away and retain your rockstar employees then a buyout might be the perfect opportunity for your company!
