block booking

English

Etymology

From block (“apportionment or grouping of like things treated together as a unit”, noun) +‎ booking (noun).[1][2]

Pronunciation

Noun

block booking (countable and uncountable, plural block bookings)

  1. (uncountable) The reservation of a large number of hotel rooms, tickets, or other items at one time; (countable) an instance of this.
    The restaurant has a block booking for Saturday night.
    • 2025 March 19, “Investment pays off in Scotland”, in RAIL, number 1031, page 56:
      Our next trip is the 1440 to North Berwick. Our train is formed of a three-car Class 385 and is full to the point that not everyone gets a seat. Partly that appears to be down to a block booking, but it seems that plenty of people know that a nice coastal town is just half an hour from Edinburgh city centre.
  2. (uncountable, US, film, historical) The sale of multiple films by a film studio to a theater as a unit, without the latter knowing much about them, allowing the studio to package less popular films with more popular ones. The Supreme Court of the United States determined the practice to be in violation of antitrust law in 1948.

Alternative forms

Derived terms

Translations

References

  1. ^ “block booking, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, July 2023.
  2. ^ “block booking, n.”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.

Further reading

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