We spoke with Tyra Warner, assistant professor and department chair of Hospitality and Tourism Management at College of Coastal Georgia, and Joshua L. Grimes, attorney at law and president of Grimes Law Offices LLC, to gain an understanding of what planners may be missing in their contracts. Keeping an eye on additional charges, such as “service charges”; locking in F&B prices as soon as possible; and taking advantage of weak corporate group demand are several ways planners can make the most of their contracts.
Don’t let fees and service charges get you down
There are many moving parts in event planning. The nature of this makes any cog in the wheel easy to overlook; dissect one of those cogs, and you’ll reveal thousands of tiny mechanisms that allow it to function properly.
Event contracts can operate along the same lines. To better understand how the machine works, we spoke with two specialists in event contracts to identify the key elements that planners may be missing.
The Most Overlooked Things
“One of the trickiest parts of corporate event contracts these days is the fees and surcharges. Because they are often spread throughout the contract, some can be easily missed or overlooked,” says Tyra Warner, assistant professor and department chair of Hospitality and Tourism Management at College of Coastal Georgia.
Of the various fees and surcharges, Warner says the “service charge” is one of the trickiest. “Service charges, charged on things like food and beverage events, meeting room set-up and audiovisual services, can be one of the most challenging because the facility sets that fee at whatever they want to—21% to 26% are not uncommon to see. Planners also sometimes want to know how much of that service charge goes to staff, and the answer varies widely.”
Read More: Everything Is Negotiable: How Sharp Planners Master the Modern Hospitality Contract
With convention center license agreements, this is even more pertinent. They often have terms and conditions and/or policies and procedures; all of these may contain additional fees and surcharges.
Joshua L. Grimes, attorney at law and president of Grimes Law Offices LLC, says venues and hotels are increasingly inserting subtle contract changes that could increase costs for planners. “This includes including service charges and gratuities in calculations of attrition and cancellation damages, calculating room block attrition per night instead of cumulatively over the course of the room block and verbiage allowing the venue to be paid even if a force majeure cancellation occurs. It’s incumbent on planners to read their contracts carefully, watch for these suspect clauses and push back when appropriate.”
Ensuring F&B Value
With focus on wellness at an all-time high, attendees’ F&B choices are shifting. Warner suggests a couple of ways to make sure your attendees have the best possible dining experience without breaking your budget.
“One strategy is to lock in catering menu prices as soon as possible, preferably at the time of contracting,” she says. “Another thing is to be as flexible as possible with the menus. Allowing the facility some leeway to substitute items can ensure higher quality for the price.”
Read More: Essential F&B: Culinary Afterthoughts
Rather than locking in pricing, Grimes suggests negotiating greater control over F&B price increases. This can come in several forms. “This can be a cap in annual price increases or a guaranteed discount over the venue or caterer’s published menu prices at the time of the event,” he says. “Also, for ‘special meals’ such as vegan and gluten-free that are often marked up, the contract should allow the venue to charge no more than their standard menu prices.”
Focusing On the Positives
Tyra says she always suggests that planners understand and position their meeting as a “piece of business” and evaluate it in the same way a hotel or venue would before negotiations have even begun—or even before beginning the RFP process.
“Identify the tangible and intangible strengths that the meeting has and leverage those in the negotiation process,” she says. “Also, be realistic about the weaknesses of the meeting and be ready to concede or compromise on some contract and performance issues that those weaknesses may impact.”
Taking Advantage of Weak Demand
In Smart Meetings’ “2026 Industry Forecast: A Constant Shift,” Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality market analytics at CoStar, shares that corporate group demand at hotels weakened during the final seven months of 2025, driven by tariffs and staffing cuts tied to the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency.
Tyra says she’s seeing the same trend from a legal point of view. “I am seeing a lot of belt-tightening among corporations resulting in fewer or smaller meetings,” she says. When this happens, she continues, a corporation’s meeting history becomes less valuable as a point of leverage.
What happens here is a sort of circular weakening of corporate group occupancy in hotels. Warner says, “Because of corporate meetings’ traditionally shorter booking window, they can often fill holes in the venue’s schedule. With weak corporate demand, though, venues may look to fill these holes with other types of events, making it harder for corporations to fulfill their meeting needs.”
Grimes says this presents planners with an advantageous position. “Current uncertainties about international travel, the economy and other government policies in the United States have caused some groups to hesitate to book, or to wait until closer to an event date to commit to a venue,” he says.
“The reduction in business creates opportunities for planners to negotiate contracts with better terms. Of course, hotels and DMOs continue to talk about increased demand and lack of supply to motivate early bookings and higher rates. It’s up to planners to know the situation pertaining to their desired meeting location, and to take advantage of reduced demand to get better terms.”
What Planners Need
The four contract clauses planners need remain the same. “The four clauses with the most financial or legal impact continue to be attrition, cancellation, force majeure and indemnification,” Warner states. “Planners need to prioritize those clauses in the negotiation, whether for meetings large or small.”
One clause Warner implores planners to add: cancellation by the hotel. She says venues rarely include these in the contract, but planners should be sure to add. “There is typically always one that specifies damages if the group cancels, but the contract is often silent on damages if the hotel cancels,” she says. “This doesn’t mean that the hotel can cancel without damages, but it is preferable to spell out the damages (or at least the way they will be calculated) in the contract.”
Other clauses Warner noted are an incompatible groups clause, whereby two conflicting clauses cannot coexist within a contract, ensuring consistency across all contract clauses, and negotiating the deposit clause. In such a clause, parties discuss the deposit amount, specify the conditions that will trigger a refund, go over non-refundable deposits and add contingencies that could impact the deposit’s refundability.
No one planner prioritizes the same contract clauses, Grimes says, where the emphasis should be applied across the board is on whether the contract includes all the provisions that would help a planner ensure an event’s success. “This often includes a force majeure clause tailored to an organization’s unique circumstances—such as a medical meeting, or an event dependent upon continued government funding,” he says. “It’s also critical for a provision pertaining to a cancellation by the venue to provide the group with adequate damages, just as venues demand if the group cancels.”
This article appears in the January/February 2026 issue. You can subscribe to the magazine here.
