Hotel contract review checklist — the 28 clauses that matter
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.
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.
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.