Duff on Hospitality Law

This year's Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association (ORLA) annual conference represents the culmination (and celebration) of months of hard work by the boards and members of both the former Oregon Lodging Association and the Oregon Restaurant Association to bring the two organizations together under a single common roof. While the number of restaurant members greatly exceed the number of lodging members, the newly combined organization has made a great effort to ensure that the interests of both constituencies are fairly represented. I applaud the efforts of Steve McCoid, Jeff Hampton and the other ORLA staff members and wish the newly combined organization continued success. Well done.

For those of you that didn't know, Sunday marked the end of a 10-week sabbatical that took my wife and me and our three small boys (ages 5, 7 and 9) first to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons for nearly 3 weeks and then to Western Europe for the month of August. What a summer break - our boys had great stories to share with their classmates when it was time to describe how they has spent their summer vacation.

Time away from the office and practice taught me many things - among them, it takes a great deal of patience and perseverance to traveling with three little boys. The time away also reminded me of the value of travel and seeing and experiencing things (even your own local practices) through others' eyes. Our experience underscored the need to include foreign travel as the part of any education - whether formal, professional or otherwise. Travel opens our minds to other viewpoints and ideas that we might not otherwise experience.  

I am thrilled to be back to my practice and to re-connect with clients and friends. I'm also anxious to apply some of the new ideas and perspectives gained over the past few weeks. 

A huge thanks to my partners and colleagues at our office - especially those in our hospitality practice - Ruth Walters and Diana Shukis - who have once again reminded me that this practice has grown well beyond me. I look forward to touching base with all of you over the next few weeks and to sharing some of these my new ideas in future posts.     

Greg and I were fortunate enough to be asked to present at this year's Northwest Chapter of PCMA and MPIWSC's 9th Annual Meetings Industry Summit:  The New Norm at The Conference Center here in Seattle. For those of our excellent attendees who asked so many good questions both during and after the session and who requested an electronic copy of our slides, and for those who would no doubt have attended had they known, here you go.

As the post title suggests, we discussed trends in group sales/event contract negotiations attributable to the "new norm," primarily, the economy and its attendant changes (AIG effect, any one?) from both the venue and the group perspective. We took a look at contracts we had seen in the last year or two, group and meeting publications and did a brief and entirely unscientific survey of some of our clients to see what new things, if any, they were seeing.

We also talked about what has not changed, namely, the basic positions from which each party negotiates and what their objectives are, as well as some of the most important provisions in any group contract. 

Thanks again to Tom Norwalk of the SCVB for recommending us and PCMA and MPI for having us.