Tournament Housing Platforms: Everything You Need to Know [2024]

Sports, travel, and tourism are all connected. Major sports events bring many tourists to cities and countries. The sports tourism industry was valued at 587.8 billion dollars last year and is expected to grow by 17.5% between now and 2030. 

If you’re hosting or planning a sports event, you must be prepared for attendees. Therefore, securing the best tournament housing can make all the difference to the success of an event–and its monetization potential. 

However, finding and managing accommodations for all your tournament attendees can be quite the task, especially when you’re also trying to drive registrations, track economic impact, manage event scheduling, measure compliance…and everything else that goes into tournament planning. 

The solution? Tournament housing platforms! Join us as we delve into the world of sports accommodation, highlighting the components of event housing to consider, the importance of choosing suitable housing for players and attendees and the best tournament housing software providers on the market. 

What is Tournament Housing?

Tournament housing is the process of arranging accommodations for participants and attendees during a sports tournament or event. It involves sourcing, reserving and managing hotel rooms for all attendees traveling to the event location.

It not only ensures that participants have a comfortable place to rest and recuperate after intense games, but also plays a crucial role in overall event logistics, ensuring individuals are near their game or event venues. 

Properly managed tournament housing can significantly improve the experience of a tournament, while poorly managed housing can lead to logistical complications, dissatisfaction, and negative feedback. Fortunately, the best tournament housing platforms provide end-to-end housing management for a great experience for the tournament coordinators, hotels, and attendees. 

How Tournament Housing Works

What exactly is involved in managing tournament housing and how does it work? 

1. Connect With a Tournament Housing Platform 

Start the process by engaging with a reliable tournament housing platform. Tournament housing software helps streamline the booking process to ensure a hassle-free and optimized accommodation experience.

Note that tournaments are often “stay-to-play", which means not every standard event housing platform will work. Stay-to-play tournaments have some complexities, so you’ll need a solution to handle this sort of event housing. 

For example, EventPipe is a modern, end-to-end event housing management software designed to streamline the process of arranging event accommodations, from sports tournaments to corporate events to independent trips. By optimizing the event housing process, our platform solves the consistent challenges event producers and convention and visitor bureaus are experiencing every day. 

EventPipe’s event housing management platform

2. Build Your Event 

Next, create your event on the platform. Ideally, the tournament housing software should make it simple to build your event, start finding lodging options and customize your booking site. 

3. Connect with Local Hotels

With your event details in place, connect with local housing partners. These could be hotels or other lodging options near your event venue. Once you’ve narrowed down the list of hotels, send them a Request for Proposal (RFP) with exactly what you’ll need. 

With EventPipe, we make it simple: you can request your desired nights, room types, concessions, and comp rooms all in one easy-to-use interface and then choose which hotels you’d like to see a proposal from. 

Hotels then review your requests and add their response to our hotel-facing portal. Once the partnership is confirmed, they can use the portal to confirm reservations, upload confirmation numbers, and manage information across multiple hotels on one login. 

4. Share the Booking Site with Attendees

After finalizing accommodation negotiations, share the booking site with your attendees. Teams, participants, and spectators should easily be able to view accommodations and rates and make their bookings online. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly, so your attendees can view and manage their reservations on the go. 

5. Analyze & Track Results

Tracking your event’s performance is integral to informing future events. How was your pick-up? Were deadlines met and communicated well? What was the average length of stay of your attendees? And most importantly, were they satisfied with their housing experience? These details are critical to understanding whether your event was financially successful, and received well by your customers, and help to identify areas to improve. 

Unfortunately, not all tournament housing platforms offer all these capabilities. You’ll need modern, end-to-end software that’s easy to use and keeps everything you need on one platform. 

Benefits of Using Tournament Housing Platforms

Using a tournament housing platform allows organizers and attendees to save time, enjoy convenience, and ensure a more satisfying tournament experience overall. Let’s take a deeper look at some of these benefits! 

Multiple Hotel & Room Options

EventPipe platform for a cheerleading tournament

One of the major advantages of using a tournament housing platform is the abundance of choice. Event planners choose room types from a variety of hotels and reserve blocks of rooms. This gives attendees access to an array of hotels and room types, allowing them to find an option that best suits their amenity preferences and budget. 

Easy Booking for Attendees

EventPipe platform for a hockey tournament

The best tournament housing platforms should make it easy for attendees to book with your site, make any changes and cancellations, or add special requests. 

A simplified booking process prevents potential headaches or hassles associated with traditional booking methods–and keeps attendees from leaving to book with another site. 

Streamlined Management for Event Hosts

EventPipe hotel pickup report

Hotels or other lodging providers can manage all housing-related tasks—from liaising with hotel partners to monitoring bookings—on one centralized platform. This includes pick-ups, reservation data, uploading confirmation numbers, RFP responses, and even access to multiple hotels with one login to view and manage reservations. 

Revenue Opportunities 

Tournament housing isn’t just about management–it’s also about maximizing revenue streams and tracking economic impact for event managers, hotel partners and convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs). 

Some revenue opportunities include: 

• A rebate or commission system, offering tournament producers an incentive for each room booked 
• The option to charge cancellation fees
• Sponsorship advertising on the booking website

Of course, not every tournament housing platform offers additional revenue streams. You’ll need to find a software solution that makes it easy to add these opportunities and realize revenue as attendees are booking–not after the event is over. 

Reporting & Analytics 

EventPipe hotel reporting

Most tournament housing platforms offer reporting and analytics capabilities, such as booking trends and preferences. This data helps inform decisions for future events, improve processes, and maximize attendee satisfaction over time.

Using a Tournament Housing Platform Versus Not Using a Tournament Housing Platform

With tournament housing platforms, it's easy to keep track of all your bookings, handle cancellations or changes, and access all the accommodation details in one place. It also provides a place for participants and attendees to get all the necessary information. 

Teams can confirm attendance and books from hotels close to the event venue to avoid the risk of getting lost on the way to the venue, missing a match, or not having adequate housing during the event. 

Without using a tournament housing platform, you’re taking on a time-consuming, complicated task all on your own–raising the risk of running into serious issues during your event for your teams, their parents, coaches and other attendees. Tournament housing platforms aren’t just about organization–they’re also about peace of mind. 

Optimize Your Tournament Housing Experience

Optimizing your tournament housing experience involves thoughtful planning, smart choices, and leveraging technologically advanced platforms. Whether you are a tournament director, housing company, event coordinator, or attendee, the platforms we reviewed aim to ease the hassle and streamline the booking process. 

But if you’re looking for a modern, cloud-based software platform that makes it easy to manage and monetize your tournament bookings, look no further than EventPipe. With our simple, comprehensive, white-labeled platform, you get access to: 

• Event Management: Access tens of thousands of hotels with multiple filters so you can find the best fit for your event attendees. 
• Customizable Booking Site: Build an event in less than 10 minutes. Craft a branded site that displays your logo and imagery–no coding required. 
• Additional Revenue Streams: Create additional revenue streams on your branded site through advertisements and optional items like extra amenities.
• Group Block Management: Simplify group block management, choose multiple hotels and room types, designate a group block manager, view live inventory, and provide attendees with booking instructions and a unique booking link.
• Request for Proposal (RFP) Process Streamlining: Users can request desired nights, room types, concessions, and complimentary rooms through an easy-to-use interface. You can select which hotels receive proposals and even negotiate and accept proposals right from your account.
• Simplified Booking for Attendees: Attendees can easily view, manage, and track their reservations on a mobile-friendly website. They can also get on a waitlist for sold-out hotels.
• Reporting and Analytics: The Report Center gives users the ability to analyze and track the financial performance and pick-up rates for all their events. Additionally, users can monitor hotel cut-off dates and reservation confirmation statuses.

Elevate your next tournament experience with EventPipe.