Hotel contract review checklist — the 28 clauses that matter

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Most planners scan a hotel contract for total cost and miss the clauses that decide who pays when something goes wrong. This 28-point review covers attrition, cancellation, force-majeure, payment terms, and the fine-print landmines.

By Easy RFP Team · Last reviewed: 2026-05-08

A hotel contract is risk allocation in legal language. When the event runs perfectly, the contract doesn't matter. When something goes wrong (cancellation, attendee no-shows, weather, illness), the contract decides who eats the cost. This checklist is the one we run on every contract before signing.

0/30 complete

Pricing — confirm what you're actually paying (7)

Attrition — the most common dispute area (5)

Cancellation + force-majeure (5)

Payment terms (5)

Indemnification + liability (4)

Operational fine print (4)

How this checklist works

Tick items as you work through them — your progress saves automatically in this browser (no account, no signup). Print the entire checklist as a PDF for offline use, or share a link to your in-progress checklist with a colleague. Reset clears everything. For the city-specific playbook, see the contract penalty-stack visualizer.

Next steps

Combine this with our 14-section RFP template and the contract review checklist for a complete sourcing workflow. If you'd rather automate this, try Easy RFP free.