Part 5-2036 Predictions 23-28: The Event Contract Has Not Changed Since 1982. Does that end now?
Six predictions about hotel contracts, plus plus, and the financial architecture built to obscure.
A note before the predictions. This is my take — a point of view, not a forecast I’m betting the house on. Some of it will be wrong; I’ve misjudged this industry’s timing in every decade I’ve worked in it, and I’ll misjudge some of this too. The point isn’t to be right. It’s to pull the camera back far enough to see the whole board, and to think it through together. So read what follows as an invitation, not a verdict — and tell me where I’m off. That’s the whole idea. For paid subscribers find the evidence link that back up these predictions.
The event contract has not changed in its essential architecture since the early 1980s. The room block, the F&B minimum, the attrition clause, the cancellation schedule, the force majeure carve-out, the service charge, the tax on the service charge: these are the load-bearing walls of an agreement designed for a world where the hotel held all the information and the planner held almost none of it. The information asymmetry is ending. The contract built around it is not going to survive intact.
Plus Plus Dies.
A $200 per person dinner is not $200 per person. It is $258 to $267 after service charge and tax and, in some jurisdictions, tax on the service charge, using a formula that is not disclosed in the marketing materials, on a percentage that is not standardized across properties, in a tax jurisdiction whose rules the planner may not know. The FTC rule requiring hotels to display full pricing including mandatory fees took effect in May 2025. Over 100 price transparency bills were introduced across 33 states and Washington DC in 2025. The AI agent evaluating an event budget cannot work with plus plus pricing. It needs a number. The hotel still quoting base prices in a world where the agent requires all-in pricing loses the corporate booking before the sales manager picks up the phone.
The counterargument is that the FTC rule is being challenged in court by the hotel industry and may not survive litigation in its current form. That is true and it is also irrelevant, because the agent does not wait for legislation. It routes spending toward transparent pricing right now, and the hotel that waits for the mandate to arrive is the hotel that has already lost the business to the hotel that eliminated plus plus voluntarily.
The Service Charge Is Exposed.
The service charge of 22 to 26 percent added to every catering bill is described in hotel marketing as gratuity for staff. It is predominantly revenue to the hotel. Most planners know this. Most attendees do not. Most corporate procurement departments, applying the same scrutiny to event spend that they apply to every other vendor relationship, are beginning to. The hotel that passes service charges to staff has nothing to fear from a disclosure requirement that asks it to say so. The hotel that retains service charges as revenue while describing them as gratuity has everything to fear. The agent knows the distinction immediately and flags it.
The Attrition Clause Is Recalculated on Actual Displacement.
The standard attrition clause requires the group to pay a percentage of revenue associated with unbooked rooms at the contracted rate, regardless of whether the hotel was able to resell those rooms at a higher rate to another buyer. The hotel that fills every displaced room at a higher weekend rate and collects a cancellation fee on top has recovered its revenue twice, which is a position the standard attrition clause permits and which real-time revenue data makes visible for the first time. Post-pandemic contract litigation produced a substantial body of case law on attrition clause enforceability, and multiple courts have required hotels to demonstrate actual damages rather than accept theoretical revenue calculations. The attrition clause that credits the organizer for rooms the hotel resells at or above the contracted rate protects the hotel’s genuine interest without extracting payment for a loss that did not occur.
The Force Majeure Clause Becomes Tiered.
The binary force majeure clause, either the event is legally excused or it is not, was designed for a world where events were clearly impossible or clearly possible with very little ground between those poles. The post-2020 world has demonstrated a spectrum of conditions between impossibility and routine operation that the binary clause cannot accommodate: the event that is not legally impossible but is commercially unreasonable given travel restrictions, the event that is advisable in theory but inadvisable in practice given public health guidance that stops short of legal prohibition, the event that is possible but produces no value because 60 percent of registered attendees have cancelled. The Events Industry Council published its APEX Force Majeure Model Clause in 2021, providing a tiered framework that distinguishes between legal impossibility and commercial impracticability. The organizer still accepting boilerplate force majeure language is accepting a document designed for a world that no longer exists.
The F&B Minimum Is Unbundled From the Room Block.
The planner paying $15,000 for a ballroom rental should not also be obligated to spend $80,000 in catering to justify the hotel’s decision to hold the space. These are two separate commercial transactions, and their bundling into a single obligation with penalty clauses for underperformance on either leg is a contracting convention designed to obscure the true cost of each component. The planner who knows she is receiving a meeting room subsidy in exchange for a catering commitment is in a better negotiating position than the planner who does not know the subsidy exists and therefore cannot negotiate around it.
The Event Contract of 2036 Is a Data Agreement.
The hotel and the organizer who share real-time access to booking data, revenue data, and displacement data have the information they need to write a contract that is fair to both parties because it is based on actual commercial reality rather than projections the hotel controls and the planner cannot verify. Marriott International’s group sales platform provides large corporate accounts with real-time availability and demand data as part of preferred partner relationships, which is an early version of the data-sharing model. The contract that emerges from a data relationship is shorter because it does not need to paper over information asymmetry with penalty structures. The agent that routes corporate group business to the hotel that shares data and away from the hotel that does not changes the hotel’s commercial incentive without requiring the hotel to be persuaded by fairness arguments it has been immune to for 40 years.
For paid subscribers find the evidence link that back up these predictions.
Read the entire Series- Part 1-4 (coming soon Parts 6 and 7. www.gatheringpoint.news/subscribe
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Part 4: The New Intelligence Layer-5 New Event Industry Predictions for 2036
A note before the predictions. This is my take — a point of view, not a forecast I’m betting the house on. Some of it will be wrong; I’ve misjudged this industry’s timing in every decade I’ve worked in it, and I’ll misjudge some of this too. The point isn’t to be right. It’s to pull the camera back far enough to see the whole board, and to think it thro…
Thanks, @David, for intriguing forecasts. I’m ever/curious and hope you’ll respond.
First tho a “yes, and” to the 1982 base: two people who became my parents married in 1944 just before the man who became my dad was shipped to Europe to fight in WWII. The hotel contract for their wedding and dinner was virtually the same format as the ones I’ve reviewed for family and friends, for students, in recent years.
In the contract for their wedding, an added clause for war - in essence, one aspect of force majeure not then regularly incorporated, and, to be served, tinned fruit cocktail! Otherwise as little specificity as now.
To this Substack:
-What precipitated a forecast on hotel contracts?
-Within hotel contracts, why these particular topics? Because they are deemed more data-driven and measurable? Other reasons?
-Of those noted, is it your experience that these are not included in 2026 for the year or future, or is it the method?
-in what ways do you think association and corporate contracts will have different data? Our experiences may differ: association attendance is impacted often by greater variables.
-By whom will change be driven: hotel owners? Brands? Revenue managers and if so those of brands or owners?
Or will corporate buyers and if so, why?
The high industry staff turnover since 2021/2022 in all areas have seen a great departure of experience and knowledge. When I began testifying as an expert witness for groups, and for hotels, in industry disputes (some 35 years ago, mostly cancelation and attrition disputes; litigation and arbitration; last in 2022/2023 over COVID meeting stoppages, before my retirement the end of 2024) there were more opportunities to learn even basic contract clause areas let alone nuances. Now some webinars, articles but far fewer sessions at industry organizations’ meetings. How, without knowledge, is change driven?
Where and how will those now and in the future who work in the industry gain knowledge to challenge whst is now and incorporate what is to become what you forecast?
Oh so many more questions. My hope is you and others will engage on this and other topics about which you’ve written and will write.
Substack has allowed great interactive communities to form. Alas this and others are for many far too “dear” to pay to engage. My hope is you want interaction and may consider different fees to follow and participate.