CLAUSE: No Room at the Inn

One of your group attendees made his reservation before the cut-off date and guaranteed for late arrival with a credit card. He arrives at the hotel for the meeting and is told that while the hotel has his reservation in the system, it does not have a room for him and will be sending him across the street to the ABC Hotel for the night.

In an effort to maximize their revenues, hotels regularly sell more hotel rooms than they have for a given night. This concept of “yield management” is based on sound business principles. But principled or not, this is no comfort to the meeting planner whose attendees are “walked” to another hotel.

EFFECT: No Clause, No Recourse

If no clause is present in the contract, the meeting planner should add one. One negotiation tack is to specify in the contract that the hotel will not overbook during the meeting dates and that, if it does, it will pay the group a set amount of money per room for any group room that it walks. The hotel may still overbook and walk guests, but is likely to walk attendees from other groups (or transient guests) before it will walk your attendees.

An alternate plan is to add a clause that explains what reparations the hotel will offer to a group or group attendee if the hotel does have to walk a group guest. Such a clause should address the following:

• Consulting with the group's on-site contact to prioritize group attendees that are walked (e.g., walk staff, but make sure VIPs are not walked).

• Making sure the hotel maintains the name of any walked guest on a special list so that anyone who calls for the walked guest can be referred to the guest's new hotel.

• Providing or reimbursing transportation for the attendee between the original hotel and the new hotel during the meeting dates.

• Providing one or more long-distance telephone calls so the attendee can inform his or her family and/or office of the change in accommodations.

Perhaps most importantly, be sure that any walked rooms are credited to the group's pick up for purposes of calculating attrition damages.

Tyra W. Hilliard, Esq. (tyra@sumnerassociates.net), is an attorney at Sumner & Associates, P.C., an Atlanta-area law firm.