What to do when venues push back.
Photo by Cameron Clark
I’ve been fortunate to have worked with wedding pros from 94 countries over my career and I’ve heard from a ton of them this past month – all with similar questions, stories of lost business, uncertainties of what to say to clients who are completely stressed.
We’re all in this together. If you have questions on Coronavirus and your wedding business, feel free to email me at hello@thinksplendid.com. I’ll be sharing my answers here on the Think Splendid blog so that everyone can benefit. I’ll also keep your name anonymous.
Splendid Progress Worth Celebrating
We're an industry that makes our living by celebrating life's milestones, so I'm going to start each of these update posts with a few positive COVID-19 things we can all smile about:
GLOBAL RECOVERY RATE
The recovery rate is now more than 78,000 people, up from 76,500 last night.
KINDNESS FROM KIDS
THIS QUESTION IS FROM A LUXURY WEDDING PLANNER:
I have a client whose wedding was scheduled for a weekend in May at a hotel. They are wanting to postpone the wedding to another open date at the hotel in October 2020.
Here is what the hotel told us: “A room rental would be assessed for the date that is currently being held and then ultimately released. As the wedding isn’t booked on a Saturday, the room rental fee could be reduced to $15,000 [from the $35,000 food and beverage minimum] for the opportunity to move the date to another Saturday or a Sunday if you prefer [the new date would still require the $35,000 food and beverage minimum, so they would be essentially spending $50,000 for the new date].
If we are able to resell that date, the amount we are able to sell it for would be credited back to your future event date. Should you decide to go with this option we would fill out a separate addendum to the agreement to release the space, the room rental applied and the credit forward option to your final bill, should we rebook that date.
If the space rebooks for $5,000 then $5,000 this would be applied, $10,000 then $10,000 would be applied, so on and so forth. We would make every effort to rebook and apply what the property garnered towards your future booking of $15,000 but as this date is less than 90 days away, we will do everything we can but cannot guarantee a rebooking.”
What are your thoughts on how to handle this? Should we push for no extra fee due to the pandemic and cancellation of all major events? Should we wait to rebook as things progress around the country since its moving so fast? Should we add a clause in the addendum to release them of any added fees if the hotel closes? I also have other, larger events booked at this hotel.
Answer from Liene:
Let me start by saying what we all know to be true: the impact COVID-19 is having on the event industry sucks for everyone, everywhere. It is not like the recessions in 1991, 2001, or 2008 where the economic impact was felt, but people’s health was not directly threatened. It is not like the natural disasters of hurricanes, fires, and earthquakes, since the actual disasters are limited in time from one to several days, after which the damages can be assessed and things can be rebuilt. COVID-19 is affecting people both economically and health-wise.
Unfortunately, since it’s been shown that people who don’t know they have Coronavirus can spread it to immunocompromised people just by going out and about in their normal lives, slowing the spread requires limiting, cancelling, or postponing events.
As an industry made up of primarily small businesses, we are being hit harder than many other industries as most of us don’t have multi-million dollar financial cushions to fall back on. And it flat out sucks. Authentic optimism allows us to acknowledge that.
As for the issues of cancelling and rescheduling weddings, I feel for everyone involved. For the wedding planners who are working overtime to do what they can to still create a joyous day their clients will remember for all the right reasons, for the brides and grooms who are finding out that the insurance they purchased is not offering the protections they thought it would, and for the catering directors and hotel general managers who have been tasked by the hotel’s multi-million dollar parent corporation with the burden of saving the financial day or risk being laid off.
These fears are largely what is driving the pushback from many venues on rescheduling dates. That said, the adage, “You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate” applies here.
1. First, the legalities (*this is not legal advice): if you are in the United States, the current CDC guidelines on no events over 50 people are a recommendation and not an outright ban. Unless your local state or city government expands on those recommendations and mandates a ban, which they have the authority to do, your client’s contract with the hotel is valid.
If your local governments have enacted an actual ban, then it is the responsibility of the venue to cancel the wedding contract as it would be considered impossible to fulfill.
2. Given what we know about how the virus is spreading and the math of exponential growth from what some countries are currently experiencing (namely Italy and Spain), the likelihood of local governments in the US and other countries enacting even stricter measures in the coming days and weeks is high.
For example, in the United States, New Jersey just issued a statewide curfew discouraging non-essential travel outside the home from 8 PM - 5 AM.
Because of this, I would recommend setting a “Go” or “No-Go” date for when you and your clients will make a final decision on rebooking the wedding.
Also, for those of us who are in Europe, Canada, or the United States: we cannot use the timelines of China or South Korea as our baseline for making plans because most of our government officials did not respond to containing and treating COVID-19 the same way they did nor in a similar timeframe. It is an apples to oranges comparison. Many citizens in Western countries also dismissed initial media reports as an overreaction or politically-motivated hoax and ignored early health recommendations, so we are now unfortunately in a worse situation than we could have been.
3. As a luxury wedding planner who has brought this particular venue lucrative event business in the past, who has other events booked with them currently, and who has the ability to bring them more event business in the future, you have an advantage here and some leverage to negotiate better terms for your wedding clients.
Again, I understand the side of the catering sales director as well as their very real fears of losing their job. Given how fast COVID-19 is moving and how quickly things are changing day to day, we need to be real about the fact that the hotel is likely not going to rebook that date in May or that the government may not even allow any event on that date to take place.
It is in the best interest of the hotel event sales manager to do what they can to secure future business. It also looks good for them (and their resumé) if they can retain their relationships with key event planners and book business now for events happening later on.
It would not be in the best interest of the hotel to lose you as a referral source for future business because of how they handle a pandemic that is outside of everyone’s control, even if they are legally within their contractual rights to do so.
It is a sticky situation on the hotel’s end, to be sure, but while there are bills that have to be paid now, the big picture must also be kept in mind.
4. What is sticking out the most to me in your question is the issue of the hotel’s 90 day policy:
90 days before May 1, 2020 is February 1, 2020
90 days before May 31, 2020 is March 2, 2020
Let’s look at the COVID-19 timeline:
76 days ago, December 31, 2019: China informed the WHO of the discovery of an unknown virus
67 days ago, January 9th: the virus was identified and named COVID-19
59 days ago, January 17th: the second death in Wuhan, China was reported
57 days ago, January 19th: the first case of COVID-19 in Germany was confirmed
56 days ago, January 20th: the first case in the United States was confirmed
45 days ago, January 31st: the first cases in Italy were confirmed
Italy locked down 10 towns on January 31st (45 days ago), the same day their first cases were confirmed. The quarantine was not extended to the Lombardy region until March 8th, and then the rest of Italy on March 9th.
The hotel can legally hold to their 90 days policy if it is in their contract (unless official bans, not recommendations, are declared), but I would try to appeal to common sense in your negotiations on this.
Can the hotel reasonably expect you or your wedding clients to have known on January 31st, when the quarantine in Europe was only limited to 10 towns in Italy, that the virus would affect other Western countries in the same way and you would have reason to be concerned about needing to re-book the date?
Let’s be real here: you would have been accused of overreacting and fear mongering had you gone to the hotel on January 31st, when Italy locked down the first 10 towns, and asked to rebook the wedding date.
At that time, many experts were still telling us it was safe to travel – just to wash our hands more often and maybe wear a mask. Wedding professionals outside of Eastern Asia and parts of Northern Italy were still holding weddings, events, and wedding conferences, and posting business-as-usual destination wedding travel on Instagram.
The hotel can choose to waive a fee or negotiate with you for terms that are in the best interest of your clients and in the best interest of keeping you as a lucrative referral source for years to come.
5. As far as adding a clause in the addendum releasing your clients’ of any additional fees should the hotel close, yes, I recommend you negotiate for this.
If possible, I also recommend negotiating for a clause that relieves them of any remaining balance if the hotel closes, including food and beverage minimums, any “in-house” floral, decor, A/V services, etc contracted through the hotel (not through you or directly through a third-party company), room block guarantees, etc.
If the hotel closes, your clients should not have to be on the hook for an event that then cannot take place at that location.
Again, you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. This applies to the hotel and venue as well.
While it would be great to get every consideration you want in rebooking the wedding, it’s important to use what leverage you have with the understanding and compassion that everyone is just trying to do what’s best for their respective companies and respective job security.
It sucks, but we’re in this together.
*This is not legal advice and should not be construed as such. Remember that laws and regulations vary by city/county/state/province/country. Always check with your own attorney for legal advice on your specific situation.
Questions from Wedding Pros
When I say we’re all in this together, I mean we are all in this together. I am not a blogger, I am a business consultant and speaker. This blog is not sponsored nor ad supported and is not how I make my income. Since we are all in this together, I am not charging consulting fees to answer questions related to COVID-19.
I will continue answering Covid-related wedding business questions from ANY wedding, event, or hospitality professional, located anywhere in the world, here on the blog over the next few weeks and possibly longer, so that anyone, anywhere in the world can access the information they may need for their business at any time.
I’ll be continuing to work through the questions sent in so far here on the blog so that we can all navigate this together as best we can. Please send any questions you have to hello@thinksplendid.com and remember there is no such thing as a dumb question.
I’ll be keeping the names anonymous so you don’t have to worry about being attached to a question in a Google search or in case you don’t want a colleague or competitor to know what’s on your mind.
Written by
LIENE STEVENS
Liene Stevens, the founder and CEO of Think Splendid, is an author, speaker, and award-winning business strategist. Armed with $2000, a healthy work ethic, and an undeserved dose of privilege, Liene bootstrapped Think Splendid from a scribble in a notebook to a successful wedding business consulting firm with a client list spanning 94 countries.
