Let’s be clear: why meeting pricing shouldn’t need a calculator
By Gareth Brooke, Commercial Office Manager, Cedar Court Hotels
There’s a phrase we’ve all become very used to seeing.
“Prices from…”
Hotels use it. Airlines use it. Event venues use it. Pretty much every industry where demand changes uses it.
And, to be fair, there are good reasons for that.
A busy Saturday isn’t necessarily the same commercially as a quiet Sunday. A conference taking over a large part of a hotel isn’t the same booking as ten people getting together for a meeting. Demand changes, requirements change and costs change.
We use variable pricing too, and we’re not about to pretend otherwise.
But I think there are also plenty of occasions when you see a “from” price and immediately think:
Right… but how much is it actually going to cost me?
And that’s where I think hospitality sometimes has room to make things a bit simpler.
Clarity has a value of its own
If you’re organising a meeting, you’ve normally got enough to think about already.
Who’s coming? When can everyone make it? How big does the room need to be? Does everyone need parking? Can we get the presentation onto the screen? What are we feeding everyone?
And, inevitably, has the one person you really need an answer from actually replied yet?
The price probably shouldn’t require its own spreadsheet as well.
There’s evidence that this kind of clarity matters to business buyers more generally.
Contentful’s 2025 B2B Buyer Benchmark surveyed more than 900 senior decision-makers across EMEA and found that 39% named a lack of pricing transparency as one of their biggest frustrations. It also found that 84% consider self-service tools important when choosing a supplier.
Read the Contentful B2B Buyer Benchmark Report
Gartner’s research points in a similar direction. In a 2026 survey, 67% of B2B buyers said they preferred an overall sales experience without a sales representative, reflecting just how comfortable buyers have become with researching and understanding their options for themselves.
That doesn’t mean people don’t want to speak to anyone.
Quite the opposite.
Further Gartner research found that buyers still turn to salespeople when they need reassurance, context or help validating a more complicated decision.
To me, that feels like an important distinction.
People don’t necessarily want to remove the human part of buying something.
They just don’t particularly want to have to ask somebody for information that could have been clear in the first place.
Variable pricing isn’t the villain
This is worth saying because it would be very easy for us to sound slightly hypocritical otherwise.
Dynamic pricing exists in hospitality for a reason.
Hotels have a finite number of bedrooms, meeting rooms and event spaces. Demand changes depending on the day, time of year, location and what else is happening around us.
There’s plenty of research behind that approach too. One study into hotel revenue management found that dynamic pricing based on different types of demand increased average modelled hotel revenue compared with a fixed-price policy.
Read the hotel dynamic pricing research
So this isn’t an argument that every hotel room, event or meeting should suddenly cost exactly the same all year round.
There are plenty of times when the truthful answer to:
“How much will it cost?”
is:
“It depends.”
Bedrooms can be like that.
Large conferences can be like that.
Private events can certainly be like that.
If one event needs two rooms, an evening dinner, extra equipment and a completely different team setup from another, we’d be doing nobody any favours by pretending one simple price could cover both.
Sometimes a “from” price is completely reasonable.
But there are also times when the price can be simple.
So why make it complicated?
That’s why we’ve changed our Day Delegate Rates
Our standard meeting packages previously used “from” pricing.
We’ve now moved to clear Day Delegate Rates for each of our hotels.
At Cedar Court Bradford and Cedar Court Huddersfield, our DDR Essential package is £25 per delegate.
At Cedar Court Harrogate, it’s £27 per delegate.
And that’s the rate.
Meeting on Monday?
£25pp at Bradford and Huddersfield.
Tuesday?
£25pp.
Wednesday?
Still £25pp.
Thursday?
You can probably see where this is going.
Harrogate works exactly the same way, with its clear £27pp Essential rate.
No weekday maths.
There may still be occasions where minimum spends, additional requirements or something outside the standard package needs a conversation. We’re not pretending every possible meeting can be reduced to one number.
We’re simply making the standard bit easier to understand.
Clear pricing is only useful if the package is clear too
There wouldn’t be much point telling you the price and then making you investigate everything else.
So the basics are clear too.
Our standard packages include things such as:
- Your main meeting room
- Wi-Fi
- Complimentary parking
- Still and sparkling water
- Stationery and pencils
- Flipchart or whiteboard facilities
- Wireless screen sharing
Then, depending on the package you choose, refreshments and lunch are included too.
You should be able to look at a meeting package and understand what you’re actually getting.
It sounds fairly obvious when you write it down.
Hospitality occasionally has a habit of making obvious things surprisingly complicated.
Simple pricing doesn’t mean boring meetings
This is perhaps the slightly ironic part.
We want the pricing to be straightforward.
We absolutely don’t want every meeting to feel the same.
Across our three Yorkshire hotels, meeting spaces range from small boardrooms to rooms capable of hosting hundreds of delegates.
At Cedar Court Bradford, smaller and medium-sized meetings can take very different forms. The Luminary is our newly created premium meeting space, with room for up to 24 seated guests, while The Evergreen gives you something more flexible, with the added benefit of its own conservatory and terrace for breakout space, refreshments or a change of scene.
At Cedar Court Harrogate, The Harrogate Town Suite offers a smart, flexible setting for small to medium meetings, while The Imaginarium brings a completely different feel, with capacity for 28 boardroom-style or 32 for banqueting and its own bar for meetings that need a little more personality.
At Cedar Court Huddersfield, our newly refurbished Ainley Suite gives medium-sized meetings and events a fresh new setting, while smaller rooms such as The Lindley offer a more focused environment for board meetings, interviews, training sessions and smaller team get-togethers.
The space should suit the meeting.
The setup should suit the people.
The hospitality should suit the day.
We just don’t think the basic price always needs to change with it.
Maybe clarity is part of hospitality too
When we talk about hospitality, we usually talk about what happens once somebody arrives.
The welcome.
The coffee.
The food.
The room.
The person who notices you need another extension lead five minutes before the presentation starts.
But the experience begins long before someone walks through the hotel doors.
It begins when they’re trying to work out whether you’re the right venue.
When they’re comparing options.
When they’re trying to establish a budget.
When they need to take a number back to their manager.
When they’ve got three venue tabs open and would really rather not build a spreadsheet just to understand them.
That part of the experience matters too.
People increasingly want easy access to straightforward information, while still valuing a real person when something becomes more complicated.
That sounds quite a lot like good hospitality to me.
Make the simple things simple.
And when somebody needs help, be there.
Let’s be clear
Not every price at Cedar Court will suddenly become fixed.
That wouldn’t make sense.
But where we can make things clearer, we think we should.
Our new Day Delegate Rates are one small example of that.
Clear pricing. Flexible spaces. Better meetings.
And if your meeting isn’t quite standard?
Talk to us.
That’s what we’re here for.
Planning a meeting?
Take a look at our latest meeting packages and clear Day Delegate Rates across Bradford, Harrogate and Huddersfield.