Building your Event Cost Estimate

The cost comparison shows you hotel pricing side by side, but it also gives you a place to build out a full event budget. The event cost estimate pulls in meals, activities, transportation, and other line items so you can see total projected spend across your properties and dates, all in one place.

BoomPop generates a starting estimate automatically based on your attendee count, number of nights, and venue details. Everything is editable, so you can adjust it to reflect your actual event plans!

First, open your cost comparison from the Requests & Bookings tab and select the Compare tab.

Next, scroll to the bottom of the comparison. You will see the Event Cost Estimate section below the hotel pricing details.
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You will be prompted to generate a Event Cost Estimate based on your hotel proposals, event parameters, and our estimates for other event line items. Select Start your cost estimate to begin.
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From there, your cost estimate will generate in a new view. The top of the section shows a color-coded breakdown of your projected total event budget. The colors map to the line item categories below it.

First, scroll down and locate the Meals section and select Edit on the right side.

Next, check or uncheck meals based on what you are providing. Then, adjust headcount per meal if attendees are arriving late or leaving early on certain days.

You can also update the per-person budget for each meal. Default amounts reflect typical hotel spend, but adjust these if you know a meal will be more or less expensive than the estimate.

Finally, mark any meals as Not at hotel if they will take place off-site. Meals marked this way are still included in your total event estimate, but they are excluded from the food and beverage minimum calculation.

The Additional Costs section includes line items like AV, flights, ground transportation, activities, photography, swag, signage, printing, and speaker and workshop fees. Some are turned on by default.

First, review which line items are active and uncheck any that do not apply to your event. Then, adjust amounts as needed. Depending on the line item, costs are calculated per person or per day.

If you have costs that do not fit an existing category, select Add other expense at the bottom. Enter a category name, choose whether it is per person, a flat fee, or per day, and add the amount.

Use this for things like a DJ, a custom activity, or any line item you want to track separately.

When you update the event cost estimate, you can save changes to an individual hotel or apply them across all hotels.
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Use the per-hotel option when a specific property requires something unique, like an off-site meeting space cost for a venue with no on-site meeting room. Use save to all for costs that apply across your entire event regardless of property, like photography or videography.

To edit the estimate for a different property or date, select the hotel name and date shown at the top of the event cost estimate page. This opens a list of all available hotel proposals.

Select the property and date combination you want to edit, then select Save to switch your view. Any changes you make will apply to that selection only unless you choose save to all.

Once you have edited your event cost estimate, head back to the cost comparison to see everything together.

The hotel pricing details remain at the top of the comparison as usual. As you scroll down, you will see your full event cost estimate appended below, including your meal breakdown with expected costs for each meal and your additional line items like ground transportation, AV, and any custom expenses you added.

As you edit meals, BoomPop automatically totals all meals marked as at the hotel and compares that figure to the food and beverage minimum listed in the hotel's proposal. If your estimated hotel meal spend meets or exceeds the minimum, you will see a food and beverage minimum met indicator in this section.

This is a helpful gut-check when you are trying to choose between properties or decide how to structure your meal plan.

The event cost estimate is visible to any organizer on the event. It is not included in the public shareable link, which covers hotel pricing only. If you need to share the full event budget with someone outside of BoomPop, you will need to export or screenshot it separately.