Contract Powerhouses
The
preparation and, often, rehashing of contracts has become a standard
service for many third parties. Precisely because the founders -- and a
good percentage of the rank and file -- of companies such as
HelmsBriscoe and Los Angeles-based ConferenceDirect are made up of
former hotel salespeople, they can tap into years of contract
experience. That translates into significant value for their meeting
clients as well as their hotel partners. Some third parties even have
gone a step further, making contractual know-how a guarantee of their
value proposition.
Such is the case with ConferenceDirect, which
two years ago took the bold step of creating and rolling out its own
contract certification as part of its employee educational program. As
it turns out, that certification is now mandatory for all of the
company's 350 associates, who in 2011 hammered out contracts for a total
of more than 8,000 events. It's an angle that has borne fruit time and
again, especially for one recent new client -- a charitable organization
whose annual meetings spend included $15,000 in state and local taxes
on hotel rooms. "They knew they were tax-exempt but had never thought to
ask the hotel for the exemption," says Brian Stevens, founding
president and CEO. "Well, hotels are not going to offer unless you ask,
and believe me, that was one of the first things we spelled out in our
contract and secured."
Denise Beran, project manager for the
Miami-based National Parkinson Foundation, won't go to contract until
her third-party partner has cleared the deal for sign-off. Beran, who
plans and manages 12 to 19 meetings a year across the country, says she
relies heavily on the vendor to negotiate and draw up contracts and
notes that she typically doesn't even "speak with the hotel until we
sign the contract."
That wasn't always the case. Before she
began outsourcing contracts, Beran recalls time wasted and high
frustration levels solving contractual disputes. "Now, If I have an
issue with any property, at any point from the time we contract until we
pay the final bill, all I have to do is call my vendor, and they
resolve the issue," she says. "I don't spend my time chasing it down."
Legal
finesse may factor heavily in settling contractual disputes, but the
strength of third-party relationships with their hotel partners lends
significant weight at the negotiating table when it comes to helping
meeting clients clear financial hurdles. That was precisely how
Scottsdale-based Global Cynergies approached negotiating down the hefty
room attrition fees one corporate client faced in 2011, after a
much-touted worldwide meeting became a direct casualty of the ongoing
euro crisis and nearly turned into a financial disaster.
Global
Cynergies, which has a long-standing relationship with the hotel, dug
deep to reduce the company's attrition penalties by replacing some of
the hotel's lost revenue with another piece of meetings business. Not
only was the client satisfied, the hotel appreciated their commitment to
resolving the issue, a process that took months and came at no cost to
the client.
"We don't charge an extra dime when we are called
back in to resolve disputes," notes Pat Durocher, who started Global
Cynergies in 2007 and guided it from a one-person operation to a major
player that booked more than 100,000 hotel group room nights in 2011, 60
percent of them in international destinations.