FullScale brings its Symposium to the Indiana Convention Center on October 8 to October 10, 2026. The venue lists a forecast attendance of 1,000 and names Sagamore Ballroom 1-7 as the program space.
A block for this event turns on two documents. The cutoff date decides who holds the rooms. The attrition clause decides who pays for the ones nobody books. The weekend night inside the stay shapes both.
The stay the calendar supports
October 8, 2026 is a Thursday. October 10 is a Saturday. A Thursday arrival with a Saturday release covers two nights, Thursday the 8th and Friday the 9th.
A three-night stay needs a Wednesday arrival. Price Wednesday, October 7 as an option rather than a default. The venue runs the Emerging Leaders' Summit at the same building that day, and a Wednesday block sits against that event's demand for inventory.
Settle the arrival pattern with the organizer before you send a request. The room-night total on the request form is the number every other term measures against.
Two nights, two different demand nights
Thursday and Friday carry different pressure inside a hotel's inventory. Blocks, a room-block software vendor, states that peak nights carry earlier and stricter cutoffs than the shoulder nights beside them, so one block can face different terms across its own dates.
Ask what each hotel expects to sell on Friday, October 9 without your block. That answer sets the cutoff you can accept.
The cutoff date
A cutoff governs reservations and inventory release. Blocks puts a common cutoff about 30 days before arrival, with a negotiating window of 21 to 30 days and cutoffs as far out as 45 days on peak nights. Early September is the landing zone for an October 8 arrival.
The cutoff is not the attrition deadline. Missing a cutoff returns rooms to general inventory and leaves the room-night commitment intact. Confirm which date your contract uses for each.
Ask for rolling release with review dates at 90, 60 and 30 days. Three review points suit a Thursday-to-Saturday block. The Friday pickup appears in the report before the final review.
Attrition for a two-night pattern
Attrition is measured at performance. Three numbers produce the bill: committed room nights, the pickup floor and actual pickup.
Work an illustrative block. Your group holds 300 rooms on Thursday and 300 on Friday, so the block commits 600 room nights. At an 80 percent floor the obligation is 480 room nights. Say pickup lands at 250 on Thursday and 200 on Friday, or 450 across the stay.
The aggregate test reads 30 room nights short of 480. A per-night floor of 240 room nights reads 10 room nights of cushion on Thursday and 40 short on Friday. Per-night measurement exposes 40 room nights where the aggregate test exposes 30. At an illustrative rate of $189 that is $7,560 against $5,670. Blocks uses the same method on its own worked example.
Ask for a floor measured cumulatively at arrival rather than night by night. Ask for damages priced at the group rate less the hotel's saved variable cost, which Blocks puts near 75 percent of the rate. Add a resell credit so every released room the hotel resells reduces the shortfall.
The inventory the block sits against
Downtown Indianapolis publishes 7,100 hotel rooms. 4,700 of them connect to the Convention Center and Lucas Oil Stadium by skywalk. More than 200 restaurants sit within walking distance of the building at 100 South Capitol Avenue.
Single properties carry real depth. Visit Indy lists the JW Marriott Indianapolis at 1,005 sleeping rooms and 104,482 square feet of meeting space. Marriott IndyPlace groups five interconnected Marriott brand hotels offering 2,276 rooms.
Those capacity figures come from the destination's own published list of connected hotels.
Where the block should sit
Delegates in skywalk-connected inventory reach the exhibit floor without going outside. The convention center publishes that connection for 4,700 downtown rooms. The skywalk schedule is event-dependent, with lockdown about 11 p.m. and reopening about 6 a.m.
Put that schedule in the request if your program runs evening sessions. A delegate whose hotel is off the skywalk route faces a walk or a ride at 11 p.m., and the answer belongs in the block notes rather than in the delegate FAQ.
What to put in the request
The groupRooms directory carries 273 hotels in Indianapolis, and the platform scopes a group booking at 10 or more rooms. One request reaches 50 or more qualified properties, and the hotels bid against each other instead of quoting a posted rate. The platform publishes no fee to the organizer, a 24-to-72-hour response window and savings of 15 to 40 percent off rack rates as its own marketing claims.
Put four questions in the request. What is the cutoff date, and does it differ by night? Is the attrition floor measured cumulatively or per night? What rate applies to any shortfall, and does the hotel credit resold rooms? What is the deposit and payment schedule?
Then ask one question about the calendar. What does the hotel already hold for Friday, October 9?
Request the answers in writing alongside the rate grid, so the cutoff date and the attrition figures sit on the same page as the rate.
Those answers price the block before anyone signs it.
