Three Houston districts carry the group inventory
Houston holds 68,260 registry hotel rooms across 742 properties that filed state room tax in the trailing year, up 1,605 rooms on the year before. Measured room revenue ran $1.8 billion, down 4.5 percent, and market RevPAR came in at $74, per TexasHotelSearch filings measured through May 2026. Those filings are self-reported and unaudited.
March 2026 posted $237.3 million in receipts, the largest single month in the nine-plus years of filings and 19 percent above the prior record. First-quarter receipts reached $550.6 million, up 11.8 percent.
Three districts carry the capacity a group can book: the downtown convention core, the Galleria and West Loop, and the Medical Center with NRG Park.
Score every property on two numbers
Room count and meeting space build the shortlist. Ask each property for its published room count, its largest contiguous ballroom and the meeting rooms it can hold on your dates, then read the terms attached to those rooms.
The convention core answers on published figures. Hilton Americas-Houston lists 1,207 guest rooms and 114,377 square feet of meeting space on its Cvent listing, with a 39,093-square-foot Grand Ballroom divisible into 12 rooms that seats 2,800 banquet style or 3,500 theater style. The state filing records 1,200 registry rooms, first in the city by room revenue. Marriott Marquis Houston files 1,000 registry rooms at 1777 Walker St, and Downtown Houston lists more than 100,000 square feet of meeting space at the property, including the city's largest ballroom.
Downtown, on the convention center walkways
Hilton Americas-Houston connects to the George R. Brown Convention Center by two indoor skywalks. The Marriott Marquis connects by skybridge.
Four Seasons Hotel Houston files 468 rooms and JW Marriott Houston Downtown files 328. The Hyatt Regency Houston is the count to watch: the state filing ladder lists 958 rooms. Ask the revenue manager to confirm it before you size a block.
The Galleria and the West Loop
The Westin Galleria Houston files 487 rooms. JW Marriott Houston by the Galleria files 482 rooms and charges a $29.25 nightly destination fee on ResortFeeChecker's September 2026 list. The Houston Marriott Westchase files as a 604-room building; the state roster carried three filings at that address and the tracker counts them as one building.
The Post Oak files 270 rooms and $46.6 million in trailing room revenue, up 4.4 percent, third in the city by revenue.
The Medical Center and NRG Park
TexasHotelSearch reports Houston Marriott Medical Center up 0.3 percent over the trailing year and the Jesse Jones Rotary House at MD Anderson up 5.6 percent. Moody Med Center 2 carries 182 registry rooms. NRG Center carries 706,000-plus square feet of exhibit space in 11 halls, and NRG Stadium hosts seven FIFA World Cup matches, five of them in the group stage.
Ranked by registry rooms
Hilton Americas-Houston at 1,200. Marriott Marquis Houston at 1,000. The Hyatt Regency Houston at 958. Houston Marriott Westchase at 604. Houston Airport Marriott at George Bush Intercontinental at 565. The Westin Galleria Houston at 487. JW Marriott Houston by the Galleria at 482. Four Seasons Hotel Houston at 468. JW Marriott Houston Downtown at 328. The Houstonian at 284.
The Medical Center houses sit below those counts. Take the ranking as a starting shortlist, then let the dates decide.
What the block costs before the rate
Lodging tax stacks on the room rate. The Texas Comptroller publishes 6 percent state tax, 7 percent Houston tax, 2 percent Harris County tax and 2 percent Harris County-Houston Sports Authority tax. Those four rates sum to 17 percent, a total the Comptroller does not print as a combined figure. Confirm the stack with the property that quotes you.
Mandatory fees raise the all-in room night. ResortFeeChecker lists 24 Houston hotels charging a resort fee or another mandatory fee, and states that other hotels may charge fees the list does not carry. Hotel Zaza Houston Museum District charges $35.89 a night. JW Marriott Houston by the Galleria charges $29.25 a night.
Cut the attrition floor to the room-night count
Set the floor on the room-night count. Blocks, a room-block software vendor, works the arithmetic on a 300 room-night block with an 80 percent floor: the obligation becomes 240 room nights and any shortfall bills at the contracted rate.
Write the measurement unit into the contract. The same vendor's example picks up 210 of 300 room nights, fills the peak night and leaves two shoulder nights at 55 rooms each. Per-night floors of 80 rooms leave 50 room nights exposed where the aggregate total suggests 30. At the guide's illustrative $189 rate the bill runs $9,450 against $5,670.
Ask for lost-profit pricing. Blocks states a negotiated clause can price the shortfall at roughly 75 percent of the rate. Ask for the cutoff as a calendar date. Blocks reports cutoffs commonly landing about 30 days before arrival, flexing between 21 and 30 days, and reaching 45 days in peak season.
Ask which properties release group inventory early
No Houston property publishes a release schedule. Put the question in writing. Ask when the block opens, whether the hotel runs rolling review dates at 90, 60 and 30 days, and what happens to unreserved rooms at the cutoff.
Compare Houston block rates on groupRooms.org
groupRooms.org lists 575 hotels in its Houston directory. The platform publishes 103,857-plus properties across 46 states, 50-plus hotels per request, a 24-to-72-hour response window, group rates 15 to 40 percent below rack, $0 fees and contract-ready proposals for bookings of 10 or more rooms. The same page states that a few states (FL, HI, IA, WA) restrict group hotel bookings under state travel laws. Texas sits outside that list.
Submit one request with your dates, your room count and the districts that work. Compare every offer on the all-in room night, with the tax stack and the mandatory fee folded in.
