As soon as your organization signs the hotel contract for a meeting, ask the hotel for a countersigned contract. Both signatures should be on the contract to ensure the agreement is legally binding. And, while contracts could still be enforceable without both party’s signatures, it significantly raises the enforceability of the contract by having both signatures and dates when the contract was signed.

Planning meetings, albeit fun and exhilarating, comes with the responsibility of making sure every detail is in place. Not having a countersigned contract can throw a wrench at you and make things very difficult when changes occur. For example, if you need to make any modifications to an existing agreement, it makes the process much easier when both party’s signatures are on the contract. It is possible that either party could dispute the legality of the contract if one party’s signature is missing from the document. And, as you know, changes can and do occur even after the agreement has been signed.

Although it is rare, we have witnessed a hotel getting out of a contract that the hotel never countersigned, even though the organization thought they had a secure contract in place. On one occasion, a hotel was contacted by another organization who needed a lot more guestrooms over the same dates, and because the hotel had not countersigned the first organization’s contract, the hotel went ahead a accepted the larger customer’s meeting, putting the first organization in a very bad situation.

The first organization had thought everything was in place and started planning their event, so you can imagine their surprise and dismay when the hotel informed them that they took another customers’ meeting, which was much more lucrative and provided the hotel with much greater revenue earnings than the first organization’s meeting would have produced.

Our advice is to never announce the meeting location until you have a countersigned contract. It’s not worth risking embarrassment. Having to start over with hotel searching and contract negotiations is not what you ever want to be faced with, as this is one of the most time consuming and stressful parts of meeting planning.

Often hotels require a deposit payment before they will return a countersigned contract to you so be prepared to pay this fee in order to receive the countersigned contract. Only then can you have complete confidence to announce the location of your meeting to the attendees and you can start the real planning of your event.