The real service
Contract protection
Sourcing gets you a venue. Reading the contract is what keeps the event from costing more than you budgeted. This is the part of the job most people don’t know they need.
Attrition
Three clause types, and only one of them is fair to a group that can’t predict attendance
| Type | How it works | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|
| Nightly | Every night is assessed separately. A strong night can’t offset a weak one. | The hotel. This is the default and it is the one you’ll be offered. |
| Cumulative | Total room nights across the whole block. Peaks offset valleys. | You. This is what we go after first on every contract. |
| Schedule | The allowance tightens as the event approaches, with review dates at which you can release rooms. | Both, if the dates are set sensibly. A reasonable middle ground. |
Source: Hopskip sourcing academy. Standard allowance is 80–90% of the block before penalties trigger, with damages of 50–80% of the room rate per unfilled room.
Same event, two contracts
Damages apply
on each night of the room block cumulatively across the total room nights.
40-room block, two nights at $240. Pickup 28 then 40. 85% allowance, 65% damages (Hopskip midpoints). Nightly: night one is six rooms short of the allowance; night two being full doesn’t help. Cumulative: 68 of 80 picked up equals the 85% allowance — nothing owed. The block and pickup are our example, not a benchmark.
The rest of the contract
What we check, every time
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F&B minimum
Sized against what your group will actually eat, not what the hotel would like to sell. We make sure tax, gratuity and service charge are defined explicitly rather than hidden behind “plus-plus” — because they sit on top of the stated minimum and make it materially larger.
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Cancellation
We push for an actual-damages clause instead of fixed liquidated damages, so that if the hotel resells your rooms, you don’t pay for them twice. This is the single most valuable redline on the page and it is routinely available.
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Comp rooms
The standard is one free room per 50 paid room nights, cumulative across the block. One per 30 or 40 is negotiable with the right leverage. For a small group this is worth less than people expect, and we’ll tell you that rather than sell it as a win.
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Concessions
Waived meeting room rental against the F&B minimum, A/V at 10 to 15 percent off, waived resort fees, complimentary wifi and self-parking, a suite upgrade or two, and your group rate honored three days before and after.
Comp room ratio: sources disagree, with 1:50 the most-cited chain baseline and 1:30–1:40 reported as negotiable. A/V discount of 10–15%: GoGather 2026 concessions checklist. We don’t publish dollar values for individual concessions, because no credible source quantifies them and we’d be making them up.
How we catch it
Two people read every contract
Your specialist redlines it. Then a Contract Quality Reviewer — a separate person whose only job is this — scores it against a fixed rubric before it reaches you: attrition terms secured, F&B minimum appropriateness, cancellation terms, concessions captured against what was available, and whether the disclosure was complete.
A specialist’s bonus depends on that quality score as much as on how many events they book. The gate is deliberate: if volume alone paid, the incentive would be to close fast and let a bad clause through, and the cost of that lands on you rather than on us.