Stay Smart

Housing Required Events

As a reminder, you must be registered prior to the booking date to secure housing for all Housing Required events. Once housing opens, you will receive a pre-scheduled block of time that your program can book your blocks. Please see below for timing for standard Housing Required events and Cheer Super Nationals events.

For questions, please contact staysmart@varsity.com.

Regardless of the Stay Smart event type you choose, you will notice that our housing partners have negotiated team-friendly, flexible policies surrounding deposits and cancellations for all of our events, in the hopes that you can spend less time on room blocks and more time on your team’s preparation and performance. To access links to convenient booking options through our housing partners, please see that specific event page and scroll down to additional information.

Stay Smart Housing Required Events
These are mostly World’s Bid giving or City Wide events with hotels that require attrition on blocks in exchange for hosting the event. Varsity All Star has worked hard over the last few years to minimize the number of events with a Housing Required designation. When an event is classified as housing required, it helps us to ensure that the event is held on the most ideal date in the most ideal venue and city. This enables our partners to lock in the lowest hotel rates at premier properties, guarantee hotel room types, and amenities.

Stay Smart Housing Rewards Events
For the majority of our two-day National and Showdown events, you now have the exciting option of booking through our housing partner for premium hotel properties. Our housing partner has worked tirelessly to secure the best rates and amenities for you and we are excited to offer you blocks with team friendly terms and conditions as well as exciting rewards for booking through our partner hotels at these select events!

Stay Smart Housing Offered Events
For our Classic and Challenge one-day events, we are excited to bring you another option that will suit your busy life-style and meet the unique needs of your program. These events will offer our TTS Live! link for fast, convenient booking of rooms with the hotels brands you know and love at wholesale prices.

• Lowest Room Rate Guarantee, plus an easy way to report a lower rate if you find one*
• Block Schedules provided no less than 4 weeks prior to each 2-day event, giving teams the ability to book only the nights needed
• Simplified booking and compliance processes
• Ability to collect and use hotel loyalty points
• No minimum night stay
  • Some premier hotel properties may require a minimum night stay for their hotel. This is not a requirement of Stay Smart.

*Lowest Room Rate Guarantee will be honored when comparable rooms are found for a lower rate. If you find a room of the same type (double, king, etc.), on the same dates, with the same included amenities (breakfast, parking, etc.) and with the same team-friendly payment and cancellation terms, please report it to the Housing Partner.

Team Travel Source

• Visit Our Website
• Call Us: 502-354-9103

Reason for Housing Required Events

• Why am I required to book through TTS to attend this event?
  
  • The ability to secure the best space for an event in the ideal time frame is directly tied to the event producer’s ability to deliver and track hotel room nights. Cities build convention centers and venues of all sizes to bring in business. Cities measure an event’s impact on their economy based on hotel room usage. If an event can prove their positive economic impact on the city by accounting for all their participants utilizing their hotels, then the city will in turn help the event to secure the best possible dates and rates for the future.

Commuter Radius

• What is the commuter radius?
  • All teams located 75 miles or less from the venue are automatically marked as local and can commute to the event.
• What if I am over the commuter radius but still want to drive?
  • We do offer commuter rosters for those over the commuter radius that are still within driving range to commute back and forth each day of the event. We do ask that you still send your parents the booking link as some may wish to still stay overnight. Coaches can email staysmart@varsity.com to request the commuter roster.
• My teams are prep/novice. Am I required to book?
  • Prep and Novice teams that are 150 miles or less from the event are not required to stay. If you are outside of that radius where a hotel stay would be needed regardless, you are expected to follow the housing requirements.

Housing Exemptions

• Do I have to book if I have hotel points? (or military discount/hotel employee discount)
  • If you have enough points to fully cover your booking, or if you have military/hotel employee discounts, you are eligible for an exemption. More information and the link to request an exemption can be found here.
• Can I be exempt if I own a vacation home?
  • If this is an owned home, you can apply for a commuter exemption (https://www.teamtravelsource.com/varsity/exemptions/). Please note, this will not be approved if it is a rental or Air bnb. This is only an approvable exemption if it is your property.

Booking Day Details

• How many nights am I required to book?
  • We do not require that teams book for a certain number of nights, but many properties do set minimums in order to book into their hotel. If you are traveling in and requiring an overnight stay, you book however many nights you need for your stay for that event. If a team is only 90 miles or so away, they might only need one night. But a team hundreds of miles away would need 2-3 nights. So you are required to book however many nights you need to be in town for the event.
• Do I have to set up blocks for my parents?
  • You do not have to set up blocks if you do not want to. When you receive your booking link, you can forward it straight to your parents so they can browse the inventory and book where they wish.
• What is my team code?
  • Your Team Code is your customer number with Varsity. It is an eight-digit code that can be found in your portal or on any invoice. If you cannot find it, staysmart@varsity.com can look it up for you.
• Why am I the last booking wave?
  • Booking waves are determined off your event registration time stamp. If you register for your events on opening day, you will be higher up on the wave list than someone who books the day after.
• What if there are no rooms left by the time I get to my booking wave?
  • It is important to note that our general booking links show LIVE inventory—availability is constantly changing as reservations are canceled, group blocks release, and our team adds new properties that become available for booking. During the initial few days of opening, there may be stretches of time where it may appear that there is no availability; however, keep in mind that there are many teams that may be holding rooms they may not use and those unused rooms will appear on the booking site available to be booked once that group block releases. In general, the best time to check availability is in the morning. So if you are not seeing what you need when you log on, just be patient and trust the process as there will 100% be rooms for everyone, it might just take a little time to flush it all out.
• What do I do if I am put on the waitlist?
  • You could have the option to waitlist for the entire length of your reservation, or you may be confirmed for some nights and waitlisted for others.  If there is a note that states “Sold Out” next to a particular date, the waitlist is either full or not available for that hotel. We highly encourage that you book a back-up reservation just in case your waitlisted reservation is unable to be accommodated by the hotel.

Coaches Block

• When will I get the link to the coaches’ block?
  • Links to the coaches block will be sent out prior to opening day in the same email that the booking wave assignments are sent in.
• How many coaches rooms can I book?
  • You are allotted one coaches room per team registered.
• This event isn’t Housing Required but can I still get the coaches block link?
  • There are no coaches blocks for Housing Rewards/Offered events. Just the general TTS blocks if you choose to book that way.