What’s in the template
This template is built for corporate events where guests fly in and stay at a hotel: sales kick-offs, congresses, launches, incentive trips. Each row is a person. Whether they were invited, whether they confirmed, when they arrive, where they stay and whether they need a car at the airport all sit on that one row. It is not a wedding or party list; those don’t need flight and room columns.
- Guest list
- 300 rows, 26 columns. Category, status, room type and arrival and departure type come from dropdowns; date and time columns are formatted.
- Summary
- Total guests, counts by status and category, and how many people arrive (and how many need a transfer) on each day from the first arrival. It fills itself in with formulas.
- How to use
- Short notes on the columns, RSVPs and personal data.
- Example
- Four filled rows: two people flying in, a roommate arriving by car and a VIP who hasn’t replied yet.
The file opens in Excel, and you can upload it to Google Sheets and work there. The headers sit in row 1 of the first sheet; don’t rename them, because that row is what another system reads when the list is imported.
What each column means
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Name | As written on the ID or passport. The hotel, the airline and the registration desk will look for that exact name. |
| Organization, Title | Who they work for and their role. Useful for seating and badges. |
| Email, Phone | The number you need on the day. Leave it blank if you don’t. |
| Category | Attendee, Speaker, VIP, Staff, Press. You can type your own. |
| Status | Invited, Confirmed, Declined, Cancelled. The summary counts this column. |
| Arrival type, flight, date, time | Flight, bus, train, car or self. Times are local to the city of arrival. |
| Arrival and departure transfer | Yes if a car is needed at the airport or station. |
| Hotel, room type, roommate | In the roommate column, write the other guest’s name exactly as it appears in the list. A double is not a twin. |
| Check-in, check-out | Hotel arrival and departure dates. The departure day is not a night. |
| Dietary, special requirements, notes | Vegetarian, allergies, accessible room, reach via assistant and so on. |
How to build a guest list
- Keep one master list. Names from the client, the sales team and the speaker coordinator go into the same file. Two lists means two versions of the truth.
- Start with name, organization and category. That is enough at the invitation stage. Set the status to Invited.
- Update the status as replies come in. Fill in travel and stay for people who confirm. Don’t delete people who decline; mark them Declined, because knowing whom you already asked matters later.
- Check the summary once flights are known. The arrivals-by-day table is your first estimate of how many cars you need each day. To plan the cars themselves, use the airport transfer manifest template.
- Send hotels a separate rooming list. A guest list has one row per person; a hotel list has one row per room. For hotels, use the rooming list template.
Tracking RSVPs
The Status column is where RSVPs live. Four values cover most events:
- Invited: the invitation went out, no reply yet. Chase this group once before the RSVP deadline.
- Confirmed: coming. Travel and stay should be filled in for these people.
- Declined: not coming. If you will invite someone else, this is where you see the space.
- Cancelled: confirmed, then dropped out. Hotel and flight changes may follow, so keep them apart.
Personal data
A guest list holds names, phone numbers, emails and travel details. Data protection laws such as the GDPR ask you to collect only what the purpose needs. In practice:
- Fill in only the columns the event needs, and delete the rest.
- Keep passport numbers and ID photos out of this file.
- Work from one shared copy instead of emailing versions around.
- Give the hotel, the transfer company and the registration desk only the part they need.
This is not legal advice; follow your company’s privacy notice and policy.
Importing it into EventProgrammer
The template’s headers are the names EventProgrammer’s guest import already recognises. Upload the file to the bulk guest import and the columns map automatically; you only check them. Columns for fields your event doesn’t collect (such as nationality) are skipped. If a category or status value isn’t defined in the event, you match it once in the preview and every row with that value follows.
After the import, each person’s flight, hotel and transfer hang off the same guest record: transfers group by date, city and direction, and each hotel’s rooming list comes from there. EventProgrammer doesn’t send invitations or emails to guests; you update the status yourself. See the guest list feature for details.