Two quotes for the same conference
A company sends the same enquiry to your general inbox and, a day later, to your sales manager directly because they had met at a showcase. One reply quotes the published day delegate rate. The other, from someone who knows January is quiet, quotes a lower rate with free Wi-Fi upgrade and an extra break. The booker forwards both and asks which is right.
Neither was wrong exactly. Your rate card is a starting point, and most of your pricing actually happens in people's heads: the season, how full the week looks, how many delegates, whether they will also book bedrooms, and whether this client might return.
The real pricing rules are unwritten
Day delegate and 24 hour packages bundle room hire, refreshments, lunch and basic AV into one per-person price. The published rate is rarely what gets charged, because experienced staff adjust for demand. Those adjustments are sensible. The trouble is that they are not written down, so they are applied unevenly.
- Seasonal and day of week rates exist but live in a spreadsheet only some people check.
- Minimum numbers for a package price are waived for some clients and not others.
- Inclusions drift: one quote includes a flipchart per room, another charges for it.
- Residential bookings get a better day rate, but how much better depends on who quotes.
- Nobody sees how much discount is given across the year.
Inconsistency is expensive in two directions
Clients who get two different prices lose trust, and agencies who compare your quotes over time notice patterns. Internally, quotes that are too generous leave money on quiet days that did not need discounting, and quotes that are too high on busy days lose business you could have taken. New sales staff take a long time to learn the unwritten rules, and they learn them by making mistakes.
How we build a day delegate rate engine
- We work with your revenue or sales lead to write down the pricing rules: base rates by season and day, group size bands, residential adjustments, inclusions per package and minimum numbers.
- Diary occupancy for the requested dates is read from your booking system, so demand can be part of the suggestion if you want it to be.
- For each enquiry, the engine suggests a rate for each package with the reasoning shown line by line.
- Salespeople can override the suggestion, but the override is recorded with a reason, and above a limit you set it goes to a manager for approval.
- Proposals pull the approved rate and the exact inclusions list, so what is quoted matches what operations deliver.
- A monthly view shows suggested versus quoted rates by salesperson, client type and season.
| Rule | Example of what it holds |
|---|---|
| Season and day | Your rate for a Tuesday in peak season |
| Group size | A band where the per-person price changes |
| Residential | Adjustment when bedrooms are also booked |
| Inclusions | Exact items in each package |
| Override limit | How far below suggestion a salesperson can go alone |
The rules are yours. We do not set your prices or tell you what to charge.
What a quote looks like after
A salesperson enters the brief and sees a suggested rate with its workings. They can still use judgement, and when they do, the reason is recorded. Two people quoting the same brief reach the same starting point. New staff learn the rules from the screen rather than from correction.
The sales manager can see where discounts go and whether they are winning business or just giving margin away.
Signs your quoting is inconsistent
- Clients have received different rates for the same event from your team.
- Your real pricing rules are known only to your most experienced staff.
- Package inclusions differ between proposals.
- Discounts are given without any record of why.
- New sales staff take months to quote confidently.