I'm working in the catering industry, so let me give you a
"professionnal" point of view, if you want a more precise one I'll
need more informations (as how much tourists are heading to Taipei in
August :) )
First of all, in order to have block rates you will need to have a
good idea on how many nights, for how many personn you will need. The
more accurate the estimations are, the easier it is to talk about
price.
You will have to set before few things as: single or two bedded rooms,
including/excluding breakfasts.
An other thing is giving a guarantee.
Let me explain, on individual reservations it is asked to have
CreditCard number/society fax/ Pre paiement to make the booking,
sometimes they accept booking without guarantee but with a 6pm
deadline (wich would be a problem in our case). For groups bookings
they ask for a guarantee, without any gurantee they will, normally,
not make the booking. Moreover if you want to talk about having
special rates Otherwise having special rates will be harder.
But you can propose them something else, than a guarantee, something
they could like.
Ask for a "block booking". It's slightly different from a group booking.
As soon as you have a good estimation about how many night/room you
would need, call hotels to talk about the rates and tell them each
participant will make his own booking on the block booking. So they
will ask individual guarantees to each participant. The only thing
with block booking is they will put a deadline, something like 1month
or 15days before check-in they won't accept any new reservations on
the block booking.
I don't speak chinese, but if you want I can call/mail some hotels,
and talk rates with them.
--
schiste