Journal
Reading a group contract against the transient nights it displaced
A contracted block is a promise to hold rooms. It is also a decision to refuse the transient guest who would have paid more for those same nights. Occupancy stays honest because the rooms are occupied. Rooms money may not.
Marcus spends the first day of a group review on the diaries, not on the occupancy graph. A wedding that cancelled late, a coach party that took the twin wing, a crew that extended by three nights at the contracted rate — each of these leaves a mark that a monthly occupancy percentage swallows. The useful question is not whether the group was “good for occupancy”. It is which transient nights were displaced, on which days, and whether the house could have filled those rooms another way.
We do not tell a general manager to refuse all groups. Coastal houses in Lincolnshire still live on certain weeks of contracted occupancy. We do ask that the contract be read against the pickup that never happened. If the diary cannot show the displaced nights, we say the file is incomplete rather than inventing a number.