Small Print Matters

As our industry moves towards the 1st October start date, organisers are calling for venue collaboration and flexibility in order to build market confidence, whilst venues are adapting and evolving their contracts to reflect the new needs of both organisers and corporates.

Jacqui Kavanagh, CEO of Trinity Event Solutions is looking for fairness.

“There is a certain expectation from our clients and they will not sign contracts that don’t offer flexibility surrounding a lockdown of any size.”

?An in-house corporate organiser, who wishes to remain anonymous, and Amy Hewick, event consultant at Hewick Events have both taken a collaborative approach and are only working with venues with which they have an existing relationship. “We have a good relationship with a great deal of venues,” said the corporate organiser. “We are looking at specific clauses to be bespoke for each venue, making it fair and reasonable for us as a business and for the venue too.”

Hewick has adapted her T&Cs and expects a venue to do the same. She says: “We need to work together to give corporates confidence that they can go ahead and not be out of pocket if a national or local lockdown occurs.”

?Mark Field FIH, operations director of The Victory Services Club thinks that this could be an ideal time for agencies to consider new venues. “We are attracting new business from agencies who felt that their original venue was too small to accommodate social distancing, too inflexible with their contracts or that didn’t measure up to their safety requirements.”

Kavanagh and Hewick both cite contract flexibility as their key driver and it seems that venues are responding accordingly. “Organisers are nervous – and quite rightly so,” says Field. “We are having honest and open conversations with our clients. We have always taken a very flexible approach and we will continue to be as flexible as we can. We are working with our clients to share the financial risk rather than it all be on the venue and we are working with each client on an event by event basis.”

Organisers and venues agree that creating bespoke contracts for each client and every event is the way forward. “There’s no standard contract at the moment,” says Kavanagh.?“Each contract is being shaped by both the client’s and the venue’s legal teams.” Hewick added: “This may be a lot of work but it’s needed in order to instil confidence.”

Venues also need to be upfront, honest and be clear about what they can and can’t deliver with social distancing in place. “If a venue can not accommodate the pre-agreed numbers they need to accept this, tell us and declare the contract null and void,” states Kavanagh. ?Hewick agrees: “Venue teams need to be responsive and address the elephant in the room because we all need to work together to create confidence.”

Local lockdowns pose a very real threat, and organisers would expect venues to be proactive, clear and concise from the offset about the way forward. “Venues need to show how they will manage this both in contractual status and in delivery mode through crisis management,” comments the corporate organiser. “I’d want a single point of contact, who is a Covid specialist to support managing the process of adapting the event. Venues also need to have a robust crisis management plan which is shared with us at the beginning of the journey. Contractually, this situation needs to be addressed and agreed at the very beginning.”

In the event of a national or local lockdown Field would offer a client alternative dates – ideally within the Club’s current financial year. “Agencies need to be aware of the financial responsibilities of booking an event because it’s just not ethical to cancel an event on a whim,” says Field. “Some events failed to attract minimum numbers in a pre-Covid world and this risk will always be there. It would be unethical for an organiser to blame Covid if their event didn’t attract the minimum number of paying guests they were expecting due to poor marketing.”

Hewick thinks that venue chains need to consider changing their T&Cs for each of their venues. “What’s applicable to a London venue may not be appropriate to one in the USA. There are certain words that need to reflect the local situation. For example, in the UK a contract needs to reference the UK Government and not the WHO (World Health Organisation) because it’s the UK Government that would impose a lockdown.”

“This is new to everyone,” says Kavanagh. “Many of the venues have been shut for months with their teams furloughed, so they were not aware of the changing landscape of regulations, and they are only now starting back and quickly getting up to speed on the government’s advice and the industry’s guidance.?Each venue’s approach varies as does the information they are making available, on the whole they are doing a great job though.”

The Meetings Industry Association’s (MIA) Contract Guidance, which was released in May as part of its package of ongoing support for the sector, has been specifically designed to help mitigate the impact of Covid on future bookings for everyone.

“The guidance from the MIA was very much appreciated, but it was published before any events activity returned and has a tendency to be in favour of the organiser,” comments Field.

“We are finding that without flexibility on both sides confidence in getting events over the line is unlikely.”

“To ensure that the guidance is fair to all parties, it was developed by a working group consisting of a panel of leading representatives from four venues as well as a creative events agency,” comments Jane Longhurst, MIA chief executive, “prior to publication, its feasibility was also scrutinised by the MIA’s board, which is predominantly formed of leading venue and destination experts.”

Hewick concludes: “The only way that we can come out of this is by focusing on relationships, working collaboratively and creating confidence that we can collectively deliver safe events.”

This article was written for Conference News and first appeared in their September 2020 issue: https://joom.ag/XASC/p34 https://joom.ag/XASC/p36