Want to ensure the service and amenities you want are delivered at your next event? These steps will help:
- Discuss your needs and desires with the hotel during negotiations, and insert your agreed-upon terms in the written contract.
- Create a hotel quality standard for the venue using descriptions from the hotel’s own website, including promised service levels and photos of meeting facilities.
- Making regular site visits and talking to other planners as your event approaches.
- Need more bartenders or banquet servers than the venue usually supplies? Ask about additional costs and add it to your contract.
- If desired, include a clause that all hotel restaurants, bars, pools, parking garages, and other amenities will be open and available to your guests.
- Create a mechanism in your contract to address concerns as soon as you become aware of them, so that the venue can take corrective action before your event.
- Negotiate a damages clause into your contract, so your group is adequately compensated in the event that the venue cannot provide the quality or services contracted for.
Joshua L. Grimes is managing attorney of Grimes Law Offices, LLC, which specializes in serving the hospitality, association, real estate and corporate industries.