The Block the Venue Publishes
The ISBA/IAPSS Annual Conference runs at the Indiana Convention Center on October 5 and 6, 2026. The venue lists a forecast attendance of 1,000.
The Indiana School Boards Association and the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents hold the conference jointly. The association's own page dates it as the 77th fall conference. Its event page starts the program at 7:30 a.m. on Monday, October 5 and ends it at noon on Tuesday, October 6.
The arrival night is Monday and the departure is Tuesday. A one-night block is the unit you price.
Set the Walk-Away Number First
District travel policies cap the nightly room rate for board members and district administrators. That cap is the walk-away number.
The convention center publishes no per-diem ceiling for this event. Read the figure off your own district's current travel policy.
Hold the cap through the whole negotiation. A hotel that clears the ceiling on the room line can clear it on the fee lines.
Price Against the Midweek Base
Downtown Indianapolis holds 7,100 hotel rooms. The venue reports 4,700 of them connected to the Convention Center by skywalk, and more than half of the downtown rooms within blocks of the building.
1,000 attendees against 7,100 rooms is 14 percent of downtown inventory. That figure is arithmetic on the venue's numbers.
The Gas Machinery Conference runs October 4 to 7 in the same building on a forecast of 900. The two events put 1,900 forecast attendees into the district across October 5 and 6, which is arithmetic on the venue's pages.
Ask each hotel to price the Monday night on its midweek base. The venue's own calendar shows how full that base already is. The Do it Best Corp. Fall Market runs September 25 to 28 on a forecast of 12,000, and the ATD Core4, ATD OrgDev and MAPP Benchmarking conferences all run September 29 to October 1 with 2,650 forecast between them. The Emerging Leaders Summit follows on October 7 with 220. The calendar carries 12 events between September 22 and October 15.
Size the Block
The group page sets the threshold at 10 rooms per night, and adds that some properties discount from five rooms depending on season and availability.
One request reaches 50 or more hotels in the destination. Submission is free.
A firm room list is the trade for a block this size. Publish the roster early and commit the pick-up.
Ask for the Fee Lines, Then the Rate
Parking and mandatory fees are the second front. Denison Parking operates every Convention Center and Lucas Oil Stadium lot, and downtown Indianapolis holds more than 70,000 parking spaces. The venue publishes no group rate for any of them.
The brand's group guide lists the concessions to ask for: complimentary breakfast, waived resort fees, free parking, suite upgrades and flexible cancellation terms.
Ask for the waived parking and the waived destination fee before you accept a higher room rate.
Get the tax line, the mandatory fee schedule and the total per room night in writing, then set the district ceiling against that total. The platform publishes no rate floor, no attrition figure and no pickup percentage, so every number in the contract comes from the hotel.
Terms to Fix Before You Sign
The brand's group guide states that shoulder nights, Sunday through Thursday, run 20 to 30 percent below peak nights.
Attrition is the minimum number of room nights your group commits to fill. The cut-off date is the deadline for attendees to book before the hotel releases the rooms.
Ask whether the attrition floor applies per night or across the whole block. Ask for a rate-protection clause and a resell credit.
Start the Request
Send one request with the conference dates, the room count and the roster commitment. Hotels accept, counter or decline, and every offer arrives in one dashboard for side-by-side comparison. Submission is free and you hold no obligation until the terms work.
Two pages on the platform state the state restriction differently. The seller-of-travel page lists Florida, Hawaii, Iowa and Washington. The help page adds California to those four. Indiana appears on neither list.
