SMALL PRINT MATTERS
Jill Hawkins speaks to a
mix of corporates, agencies
and venues to understand
how the industry is
approaching event
contracts post-Covid
s our industry moves
towards the conditional
1 October restart date,
organisers are calling
for venue collaboration and
flexibility in order to build market
confidence, while venues are
adapting and evolving their
contracts to reflect the new needs
of both organisers and corporates.
Jacqui Kavanagh, CEO of Trinity
Event Solutions is looking for
fairness. “There is a certain
expectation from our clients and
they will not sign contracts that
don’t offer flexibility surrounding a
lockdown of any size,” she says.
An in-house corporate organiser,
who wishes to remain anonymous,
and Amy Hewick, event consultant
at Hewick Events have both taken
a collaborative approach and are
only working with venues with
which they have an existing
relationship. “We have a good
relationship with a great deal of
venues,” said the corporate
organiser. “We are looking at
specific clauses to be bespoke for
each venue, making it fair and
reasonable for us as a business
and for the venue too.”
35
Contracts
Hewick has
adapted her T&Cs
and expects venues
to do the same. She
says: “We need to work
together to give
corporates confidence
that they can go ahead
and not be out of pocket if a
national or local lockdown occurs.”
Mark Field FIH, operations
director of The Victory Services
Club thinks that this could be an
ideal time for agencies to consider
new venues. “We are attracting
new business from agencies who
felt that their original venue was
too small to accommodate social
distancing, too inflexible with their
contracts or that didn’t measure
up to their safety requirements,”
he notes.
Kavanagh and Hewick both cite
contract flexibility as their key
driver and it seems that venues
are responding accordingly.
“Organisers are nervous – and
quite rightly so,” says Field. “We
are having honest and open
conversations with our clients. We
have always taken a very flexible
approach and we will continue to
be as flexible as we can. We are
working with our clients to share
the financial risk rather than it all
be on the venue and we are
working with each client on an
event by event basis.”
Organisers and venues agree
that creating bespoke contracts
for each client and every event is
the way forward. “There is no
standard contract at the moment,”
says Kavanagh. “Each contract is
being shaped by both the client’s
and the venue’s legal teams.”
Hewick added: “This may be a lot
of work, but it’s needed in order to
instil confidence.”
Venues also need to be
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