Availability block

A set of rooms held in the PMS for one group, event or contracted account, taken out of general availability for a set date range.

You create a block when a wedding party, a conference, a tour operator or a corporate account needs rooms reserved before the individual guests are known. The block holds the inventory and the agreed rate. Guests then book into it as named reservations, which is called picking up the block.

The two things that matter operationally are the rooming mix and what happens to unsold rooms. A realistic block often needs the same room type at more than one occupancy and more than one rate, for example doubles at a group rate plus a handful of singles for organisers. Not every PMS can model that inside a single block, which is why hotels end up splitting blocks or tracking the difference in a spreadsheet.

Unsold rooms are governed by a cut-off date, after which the remainder is released back to general availability. Blocks left open past their cut-off quietly suppress availability the revenue team could otherwise sell.