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Organizer defaults: meeting-goers get the bill
In an unusual and unexpected twist, when a meeting organizer defaulted, attendees got the bill.
The Westin Casuarina Las Vegas Hotel, Casino & Spa is holding attendees responsible for paying the bills still owed by the organizers of a meeting they attended late last year, according to recent news reports including those on Chron.com.
As conference speaker and coauthor of Chicken Soup for the Dental Soul, Don Dible told the Associated Press:
“Hey, I just showed up and handed the registration clerk my credit card. I paid for my room and expenses. I thought that was the end of it. Five months later, I’m charged $665? I’m not a happy camper.”
The issue: almost $57,000 that The Coaching Center of Austin, Texas, owes the hotel for food and beverage and other services related to a dental conference it held last fall. Mr Dible told the AP that speakers and attendees started seeing charges for these meeting costs on their credit cards as a “pro-rated amount per attendee.â€
News reports quote the hotel owner as saying that the meeting organizers were warned this would happen if they didn’t pay up.
“This takes the problem of unexpected fees and surcharges to a whole new height,†said Tyra Hilliard, Esq., CMP, an Arlington, Va.–based consultant and educator on legal and risk-management issues for the meetings industry.
“This is a very unusual situation, one that I have never run across before,†said James Goldberg, a meetings industry lawyer.
He adds that he isn’t sure if the hotel can make these pro-rated charges stick, “but that’s probably the subject of future litigation.â€
Buyer beware is the lesson here, according to Joan Eisenstodt of the meeting consultancy firm Eisenstodt Associates.
“Years ago, I learned to read the folio information when I checked into hotels. It is a contract, and it is remarkable what can be charged back to an individual,†she said.
Report by David Wilkening
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