Marriott Group contracts
 

A friend of mine from the UK has a group contract where she has to fill 80% of 28 rooms over three days in early April for a US group get together. All they are giving us a $20 a night discount. Marriott is a nightmare to work with we want to cancel the contract. We notified them of the intent to cancel in November.

They are making us hold up our part of the bargain. However as part of the agreement we are to be allowed rooms 3 days before and 3 days after for the same rate. We having a hard enough time getting them to hold up their part of the bargain. This is just unacceptable.

Anyone have any experience getting out of a Marriott's group contracts?

Generally there should be a cancellation clause in the contract that outlines the fee schedule for cancelling by certain date(s) prior to the event.

If it is too far past the last cancellation date, you are liable for the rooms you agreed to fill.

Make sure all guests have the appropriate group code when they call in to make their reservations, or the agent won't be able to see the discounted rate that is available. You can also sometimes ask your sales mananger to release extra rooms at the discounted rate if in fact they are all full. It may be that something else is going on at the hotel where the room type you are entitled too is full.

In the end it is a contract, so don't be surprised if they want you to pay up to break it.

lauti is correct. We book all different brands of hotels and they're basically the same. You sign the contract and it's yours. We've also had to pay up if all the rooms we contracted for aren't filled. Once we got lucky and they didn't bill us for the rooms. This happened when we went way over our F&B minimum. Another way you might get lucky is if, closer to the time, they are sold out and could use some of your rooms. They might release some of your rooms in that instance as lauti pointed out. The cancellation fee on our upcoming contract would be 5K if we chose to cancel.

Bobette

Definitely once you sign the contract, you are bound by the stipulations within it. This is one of the major reasons I have stopped doing group events at Marriotts. Last year, I needed around 22 rooms for a couple of nights. They quoted me a price that was $5.00/night more expensive than than if I used the online tool AND they wanted me to sign that contract where I'm commited to those rooms. Using the online tool to get all the rooms allowed me to cancel (any or all if needed) up to 6:00pm day of arrival.

Their reasoning behind it was that if we do the group contract, they could block of the rooms all in the same wing of the hotel and I would be able to get more Marriott points as a meeting organizer. In the end, there were enough people with Marriott accounts so we were able to give 3 rooms credit/points for the stay to each of them and we were still able to get everyone in the same wing of the hotel. (I called the hotel a week beforehand and talked with the GM.)

So the moral of the story is, if you want to pay more and have a more restrictive contract, then by all means use the Marriott Meetings/Groups team to set you up. Otherwise, do it yourself, or as we did this year, take your group to a different hotel chain.

For what it's worth, right after college many years ago, I used to work as a sales coordinator at a hotel and have a little experience with your situation.

One of the things to note when doing a contract is that you are being guaranteed rooms at a reduced rate (and in this case, it's $20 below the regular rate - but sometimes its more & sometimes its less, it usually depends on what's going on in the market and what's going on at the hotel and how many rooms you need and for how long). The hotel will guaranteed you those rooms for your length of stay at that price even if their rates go up, you're still able to get that price point.

What does your contract say in terms of cancellation? I would assume that there are attrition clauses & cancellation clauses in the contract. Your friend signed with these clauses. Your friend agreed to pick up 67 out of 84 total room nights. The hotel agreed to hold 84 room nights for you (that they could have potentially sold to another customer) with the understanding you were picking up 67 of them. And now you don't want to pick up any of them. Well, that puts the hotel at a potential loss (remember business are not charities - they are businesses - this is not just a Marriott thing - it's a Starwood, Hilton, Hyatt, InterContinental, Choice, Kimpton thing too).

You said you're having a hard time having them hold up their part of the bargain? What part of the bargain are they not following?

In this down economy, I'm sure hotels are being more flexible with their contracts - maybe try to use the attrition towards a future piece of business at the hotel?

Good luck with this - but I will say that my thoughts up front are that your friend signed a contract on behalf of the company - and now your company wants out. What if your clients signed a contract with you & then they decided they wanted out - would you just let them out because of the kindness (especially with businesses hurting as much as they are) or would you try to maintain your agreements so you can keep your staff employed? J

Just my 2 cents...

Contracts with hotels for small blocks of rooms (say 20 rooms for 2 nights each) are generally fool's missions in my experience.

I've done them across all the big 3 chains and its far better to find/book on-line than negotiate with group sales - who must be compensated by commission. You would think volume discounts and add-ons (such as breakfast) would come easy in exchange for the guaranteed revenue but rarely do they offer anything you can't get better (or cheaper) on-line. When you call their bluff (why is your rate $20 more?), they get annoyed and tell you to just do that. And you get locked into cancellation / attrition penalties.

Much better off doing your thing on-line, then calling the GM with a rooming list and requests to be placed together.

I've also done the opposite where you pretty much take over the entire hotel. You get to dictate price but those contracts have various deadlines and limits as to how much you can give back so many days out.