Whereas in German the term Bankettabteilung is still used by many hotels, many others have moved to the term Events Team or some similar constructions with Event. Assuming the other answerers might have just taken the English equivalent of Bankett, but I can not really recall that when booking an event at an international hotel outside of Germany being forwarded to the banquet department in the past 10 years... Also would not call it an allotment... I usually get a room contincency/block booking until a deadline well before the event for X numbers of rooms. Also there are two types of contingencies, one where I tell the hotel the number of people in our party e.g. for internal events... and when we host client events there is a contingency where participants can book individually at a preferred rate...