For social service agencies that rely on hotels as part of their emergency housing solutions, availability and affordability of rooms are critical to maintaining safe placement options for clients. 

While there are many factors that can influence hotel availability and pricing, large events in your local area can have a significant impact. Major sporting events, concerts, conventions, and festivals can quickly increase demand for hotel rooms, limiting availability and driving up nightly rates across an entire region. 

For agencies supporting individuals and families in crisis these sudden changes in hotel availability can create unexpected barriers to safe placement. Planning ahead when possible can help ensure that safe housing options remain available when clients need them most. Monitoring local events and considering them as part of broader safety and housing planning can help reduce last-minute challenges when securing safe accommodations for clients. 

How agencies can plan ahead for local events

Do you know about the events happening in your area? Is your local stadium hosting World Cup matches or BTS’s comeback concert tour? Does your area host an event annually (music festivals, horse races, etc.)? One way to prepare for an influx of visitors to your area is by monitoring local event calendars. 

Start by looking at your local event venues. Do you have any arenas and/or stadiums in the areas where you regularly book reservations? Staying up to date with their event calendars can help you plan for when large-scale events are happening. Do any of these large scale events have multi-day festivities (Super Bowl, sports all star games, conventions, etc.)? 

These are all important questions to be asking throughout the year so that your team is not caught unawares when the need for emergency housing arises. 

How you can use Safe Stays to ensure hotel availability during busy time periods

There are a number of ways that using Safe Stays for your hotel bookings can help ease the process of getting guests into hotels during high demand periods. If, as you’re reviewing your local event calendars, you anticipate having to place guests into hotels during these timeframes, here are some actions we recommend based on our experiences with what has worked best for customers in the past: 

• Book accommodations as early as possible.
  
  • Be sure to check any cancellation policies before booking, and make note of them in order to cancel any unneeded hotel rooms without fee. 
  • Booking at alias approved hotels allows you to use an alias name for the reservation and doesn’t require the guest to show ID, which will allow you to place guests into any pre-booked rooms seamlessly. 
  • You’re able to book longer stays and request an early check-out, allowing you the flexibility to make the stays as long or as short as you need them to be. 
    
    • Note that some hotels have length of stay discounts, meaning that if the guest stays for a longer period of time, the nightly rate will sometimes be lowered. Requesting an early check-out will affect any length of stay discounts that are applied to the hotel stay. 
  • If you foresee the need for 5+ rooms during a potentially busy time period, please reach out to us to discuss if a room block is a viable option for you. 
• Identify alternative placement areas nearby that may not be as impacted. 
  
  • Do you have a means of transportation for your client to get to a different area if needed?
  • Is there a location outside of your main booking location that is accessible by public transportation that you would feel comfortable sending your clients to? 
  • Does your agency have any funds that can be put aside for transportation in the event that you need to book them somewhere that is further away? 
• Use Safe Stays credits as an option to plan for price increases.
  
  • Safe Stays credits can be pre-purchased by your agency and applied to any future Safe Stays invoice. 
  • You can also set up a public facing Safe Stays credits page, which you can share with your networks and supporters that allows them to purchase Safe Stays credits for your agency that can then be applied to any future Safe Stays invoice. 

Need help getting started with planning ahead? Don’t hesitate to reach out to the Safe Stays team at customersuccess@reloshare.com, and we can talk you through potential scenarios and options to identify what will work best for your agency!

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