No vacancy...due to earthquake

What happens when you're meeting is scheduled to occur at a designated hotel, and then an earthquake damages the majority of meeting space? Given the east coast's 5.8 quake last week, there are many organizations who are finding that out. The Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center -- one of the premiere convention hotels located in the Washington, DC area -- suffered severe damage to their ballroom space preventing it from being of use to many pending group meetings. However, what is a group to do now that their meeting can no longer take place at this property?

It's situations as such that make it critical to negotiate a hotel agreement that covers these and other occurrences. This event is by no means the hotel's fault. Therefore, this instance would be covered under the "Force Majeure" or another term might be "Impossibility" clause. This clause essentially states that one or both of the parties can terminate their performance of the contract (without liability) if that party's performance is made impossible due to events such as a "natural disaster." This particular clause is a popular one for debate in the meeting industry given its ultimate power of stopping something from occurring -- and preventing revenue from being generated.

Therefore, you'll see many variations of this type of clause, as well as terminology that makes it very specific as to what it will -- and will not -- cover. For instance, "natural disaster" was mentioned above; however, there are many who will provide more specific terms defining the obvious ones such as "earthquake" and "hurricane" so that it's clear a 'bad hair day' is not considered to be a reason for having to cancel a meeting. Hotels are a business and assume a certain level of risk in holding space aside for you, which is no longer available for other groups. That's what makes this particular clause one of the critical ones to be included in the hotel agreement.

You could also go one step further and state what will happen in the event that something does occur. For instance, you might include verbiage that the hotel will work to relocate the group to another property with comparable space and rates. This is what's happening to those group's scheduled for the Bethesda North Marriott.

This is just one aspect of the force majeure clause as it should cover other areas such as epidemics, strikes, terrorism etc. But essentially, good contract language should address the consequences of a potential catastrophe and its negative influence on event attendance. The key is to make sure that this clause is included in your agreement altogether. If you're interested in learning more about negotiating hotel agreements, feel free to contact us.