Contract Basics
A specific date/time when the contract must be signed and sent back to the hotel in order to be considered final and valid.
What is Acceptance?
A fee charged by hotels for the work of unloading/loading and transporting luggage completed by members of a hotel’s bell staff.
What are Porterage Fees?
In the case an audit of either rooming list or hotel guest list is required, both parties agree that confidential and/or personal information shared in the audit process will not be released.
What is the Right to Audit?
The legal compensation awarded to an injured party for the real financial injuries or losses sustained due to a breach of contract, such as a hotel's unsold guestrooms or a planner's relocated meeting costs. The law automatically grants these remedies to cover the exact, documented losses suffered by either hospitality venues or meeting organizers.
What is Actual Damages (Compensatory Damages)?
A specific date agreed to by both parties (Hotel and Client) when a property releases a block of rooms or space that will not be used by the Group. The Hotel will attempt to maximize revenue by placing the unused rooms or space back into its sellable inventory. For the Client, this is usually the last day in which the Client can release a certain number of rooms or space without liability.
What is a Cut-Off Date?
What are Food & Beverage (F&B) Guaranties?
What is Walk Clause/Relocation?
States the hotel will not offer any sleeping room rates lower than the negotiated Group rates over Group meeting dates unless the lower rate is extended to all room nights in the Group room block. This clause shall not apply to special negotiated ongoing corporate rates. This clause has been proposed and used by some groups in an effort to minimize the risk of having group attendees book outside the block.
What is Lowest Group Rate / Rate Integrity?
Title III of this federal law requires that the facility be responsible for public areas, sleeping rooms, and restrooms, while the event host is responsible for function room layouts and accommodating special needs (e.g., providing a sign language interpreter or materials in large print), though specific responsibilities may be allocated differently within the contract.
What is ADA Compliance/Auxiliary Aids?
The terms under which the hotel and the Client have agreed will be the group’s minimum revenue performance, usually expressed as a percentage of the group’s total revenue commitment. If the group does not achieve this minimum, it agrees to pay the difference as an Attrition fee.
*A good contract will show the calculation of how the hotel would calculate damages should the group block not meet the required percentage.
What is Attrition?
The Hotel agrees that all guests arriving with a confirmed reservation under the Group’s contracted room block shall be granted priority accommodation status. In the event of an oversold situation or capacity constraint, the Hotel shall exhaust all available alternatives and walk non-Group, transient guests first. Under no circumstances shall a guest within the Group's block be relocated or "walked" unless the Hotel has already walked all non-contracted guests, and doing so is the absolute last resort to resolve the room shortage.
What is Walk Protection/Priority Accommodation Status ("Last to Walk") ?
If a group cancels, the hotel would make effort to re-sell the guest rooms and/or meeting space that was originally contracted and only bill the group for the revenue they were not able to recover.
E.g. In the event that the Group cancels the Event, the Hotel shall undertake reasonable efforts to resell rooms and function space and will credit those revenues against the Cancellation Fee, on a “last sale basis”. The term “last sale basis” shall mean that the cancelled guest rooms are the last rooms sold from the Hotel inventory.
What is Mitigation/Re-Sell?
During the event, if any additional items or services are requested by attendees, the group is not financially responsible to cover the additional spend unless they designated authorized signers to add those items/services.
At group’s request in the event that attrition applies, the Hotel will compare its in-house guest list to Group’s registration list. Group will forward its registration list in Excel format to the Hotel by the close of registration. The Hotel will compare its in-house guest list, which shall not be disclosed to Group, with Group’s registration list, and any guest room occupied by an attendee on Group’s event registration list, but not booked through Group’s room block, will be credited to Group’s room block pick-up.
What is a Audit Request?
What is Standard/Expectation of Service?
A letter signed by your client designating HelmsBriscoe as their chosen entity for site selection and contract negotiations.
What is a Agent of Record / Letter of Agency / Letter of Appointment?
Hotel cannot share or discuss any information that the client has shared regarding content, contact information for clients or attendees.
What is Data Privacy?
Private dispute resolution process, often referred to as alternate dispute resolution, in which the parties agree to submit their dispute to an impartial third party for a decision. Depending on the type of arbitration, the arbitrator's decision may or may not be binding. Courts may require some disputes be submitted to arbitration instead of or prior to the formal trial process.
What is Arbitration / Dispute Resolution?