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So here we are again. You’re set to snip, claw and rip your way into mice.net’s third annual sealed section in the hope of discovering some of the latest and greatest stories of ooh, ah and shock horror. And we’ve delivered – again – thanks to our many industry contacts, still full to the brim with stories on the, shall we say, seedier side of events.
As in the past in the majority of cases we’ve kept names out of our bevy of tales to prote

t the innocent and, as I’ve said before, we’re not really into being sued. From the many we’ve received we’ve selected the following to fill this year’s sealed section because they are so different to previous years. There’s a bit of a theme this year too. A lot have to do with those professional of all professional people, the professional conference organisers. We certainly haven’t meant to target this group – it just seemed to happen that way this time around. Perhaps the lesson about this and the many stories about PCO activity harks back to the old adage of “buyer beware”. Ensuring you’ve got all your i’s dotted and your t’s crossed is imperative in any business, and certainly the case in the wonderful world of business events. Yes folks, within the shock and shlock on the following pages there is a laugh to be had but also a lesson to be learnt.

Can we suggest you put the kettle on or pour yourself a nice glass of red, and enjoy mice.net’s 2006 sealed section. We certainly enjoyed putting it together.

And as always, we welcome your feedback.

Dracula’s night in?

The housekeeper of a resort hotel got the shock of her life when she entered the room of one delegate following an all-night party.

According to the housekeeper the room looked like a scene out of psycho. There was literally blood everywhere – on the floor, the curtains, and even on the ceiling. The freaked-out cleaner even found a blood-soaked towel in the fridge freezer.
Management were aware that a group of conference delegates were “partying” in the room after the conference dinner but never received any report of somebody being injured or hurt that night or the following day.

It still remains a mystery to all except those who were in that room on that dark, moonlit night.

all aboard

A trip out of Cairns for world congress delegates saw the boat stop at Green Island on the way to the reef. Despite a double head count one overseas delegate was left on the island when the boat departed.

Thirty minutes later the PCO on board was informed of the situation. The call was to turn around and thus lose 75 minutes out on the reef or pick up the delegate on the return. The PCO made the call without informing the conference chairperson for the greater good, and the boat continued on to the reef.

The PCO was next informed that another boat was stopping at Green Island and could pick up the delegate before heading onto the reef. The PCO was relieved, but still didn’t inform the client.

The next message to the PCO was that a helicopter was stopping off at the island and the delegate could hitch a ride out to the boat’s destination pontoon. It was at this stage that the PCO dutifully informed the client of the situation and was seen as a saviour.
On arrival at the pontoon delegates who knew the missing person were surprised to see their excited friend waiting to greet them.
Everyone was happy and the boat crew have presumably tightened up their counting procedures.

Picture this:

A stunning island venue, sleek transport bobbing on the water, and hundreds of conference delegates out for a good time. And the evening turned out to be a great one for all except for two delegates who found getting on and off the boat harder than anticipated.

On the way onto the island one delegate found himself clutching at anything he could (including nearby delegates) as he stumbled along a narrow gang-plank. Before anybody knew what had happened he’d fallen into the water, warts, watch, wallet and all to spend the next few hours wet with the experience.

On the return journey another delegate hit the water and spent the trip back to the mainland a little worse for wear.

There have been numerous stories circulating about PCOs giving reduced catering numbers to venues in an effort to save a few dollars, but none better than this one.

When sandwiches were ordered for 100 delegates at a conference the PCO thought they could get cute by not telling the venue that there were in fact 120 delegates. Unfortunately for them, two problems emerged:
The first one was insufficient seating. The PCO said to set extra seats to give delegates a choice of where they wished to eat. Got out of gaol on that one! But can you believe it, the venue actually plated the sandwiches; that is, they set up the catering area with only 100 plates, each holding four small sandwiches and a cake.

The last 20 delegates to arrive to feast on their working lunch could not find a plate at all with the result being 20 upset delegates, including some of the committee who had stayed to the end of the queue.

The PCO had egg on their face and tried to get out of it by saying they had unexpected numbers. The trouble was that everyone had name badges and workbooks so the PCO must have known.

The venue hurriedly saved the PCO by making more sandwiches, and subsequently advised the client of the PCO’s error so that they wouldn’t be seen as being the reason for the mix up. The PCO ended up with more egg on their face from the client and despite attempted vague explanations, lost the trust of a once long-standing client.

It must be a God-awful moment when you’re trying to accept an award in front of your industry peers and you can’t remember how you got onto the stage or what you’re even doing there in the first place.

And that may be exactly what passed through the mind of one award-winner at an industry dinner this year.

That no-one sitting at this woman’s table realised she wasn’t herself until she was standing in front of the microphone and shuffling through her notes was understandable. And certainly the quick-thinking of her comrades standing behind her helped put a quick end to the scene.

But a word of warning to anyone who may have to accept an award at an industry event: don’t go slow on the H2O and give every other beverage a miss until your category is well and truly out of the way.

Speak easy

When a PCO was advised at the last minute that the owner of a speakers’ bureau was unable to fulfil a speaking arrangement the quick-thinking PCO decided to change the topic of the planned presentation, especially after a staffer at the bureau said the reason for the cancellation was not a major one. So when the PCO told the bureau boss the new topic at the event was “What to do when the speakers’ bureau lets you down” the boss decided he could attend after all.

The dreaded indemnity clause in the venue hire contract reads:
You, the Hirer, must indemnify the Owner and save the Owner harm from all losses and claims, including legal costs, incurred by the Owner as a result of:
(a) death or personal injury of any person at the Event;
(b) loss or destruction of any property including the Premises of any person at the Event; howsoever caused.
The discussion between the venue owner’s bookings manager and the would-be client went like this:
Client: We cannot sign the indemnity clause.
Owner: Why not? It’s our standard clause.
Client: But it’s way too wide. It applies to accidents “howsoever caused”. This has the effect that even if the cause of the accident or loss is a defect in the building, we have to indemnify you. It could even apply to an injury sustained by one of your own employees as a result of a defect in the premises. In other words, even if it is your fault, we must cover you. Do you understand how unreasonable the clause is? Owner: Sorry, it’s our standard clause. No-one else has ever objected to it and we have been told by legal advisors not to tamper with it. Client: We would really like to use the venue, but we just can’t sign that clause. I am afraid we will have to say “no” and go somewhere else.

Some of you are nodding your heads. You have experienced just this. For the others, believe it or not, this was the transcript of a discussion between my law firm and a venue we had considered for our Christmas party. For us, the indemnity clause was a genuine deal-breaker and thankfully our in-house event manager spotted the clause, and we walked away.
We ended up hiring an alternative venue that did not insist on such a ludicrous allocation of liability in

its documentation. But the meetings and events sector is now rife with such frustrating interactions. So much energy is being wasted writing and reviewing such clauses and often they are the driving issue of the negotiations. So much is wrong with these clauses – this article is barely enough space to point it out. And the disease is by no means confined to venue operators… In this article, I implore the meetings and events industry: enough is enough!

Some types who pride themselves on a robust world-view can be heard saying, “It’s a dog-eat dog world and if you can get away with it you should,” or perhaps, “this is just a process of ordinary commercial negotiation and your response was to speak with your feet and go elsewhere, so what harm was done?”

Well, to those commentators I would respond that:
1. Not all contracts get reviewed by a lawyer. Often the venue hire agreement, for example, is sent by a middle manager who has no power to amend the agreement, who has no legal training and no skills to comprehend it and whose eyes glaze over at the sight of what is often a turgid mass of fine print. Then there is the cost of having a lawyer review it. As a result, many such clauses go through to the ‘keeper’ and are missed, or not properly recognised for what they are. As pointed out below the consequences can be horrendous.

2. The more organisations that use such clauses the more the practice becomes “the norm” and the more difficult it is even for the lawyers to stop including the clauses in the so-called “standard” contracts. Lawyers are wary of being criticised (or even sued) for not including a clause that has become common practice, even though it may be harsh.

3. Even if true, the claim that the clause has never been objected to by anyone else may mean simply that no-one has previously taken the time and effort to read it and understand it. This should never be enough to make you resile from any objections you might have on the merits.

4. The argument that the clause is “standard”, and cannot be changed is perhaps the most annoying argument of all. In many cases, it is the same as saying “I don’t want the hassle or cost of trying to think about this clause and its implications”. Sure, sometimes organisations have given thorough consideration to using the clause, but often standard clauses are written in a vacuum – ie as ideal-world templates and not in the context of real commercial negotiations. Combined with fear of making changes to legal documents, this is a strong force for entrenching the clause and making it unalterable as a matter of corporate policy.

5. In some circumstances the contract and the clause may actually be unconscionable or unjust – and thus unenforceable – under statutory regimes such as the Trade Practices Act and the Contracts Review Act.

6. Finally, you cannot always “speak with your feet” and go elsewhere. Time is almost always running out when it gets to the stage of actually reviewing such contracts and there is also the cost of multiplying legal fees if you are having a lawyer review them. It is hard not to suspect that organisations using such contracts rely on these very pressures to push their unfair clauses.
So what, in fact, is wrong with such clauses – and are all indemnities odious? Indemnity clauses are common in the meetings and events sector because many participants are in the middle. If you are a “middle-man”, such as a PCO, you are probably contracting with suppliers on the basis that they supply your client and its delegates. In such cases it is perfectly fair and reasonable for you to have a clause in the supply contract that states that if the supplier is negligent and causes harm to your client or its delegates, the supplier will indemnify you against any claim the client/delegates make against you. For example, if you hire a company to provide stage and lighting technology and a delegate is zapped by an exposed electric wire, the delegate or client might try to sue you, and it is perfectly reasonable for you to have an indemnity in place by which the supplier agrees to “cover you” against such claims.

My gripe is not with such clauses in such cases, but with clauses by which party A is required to indemnify party B for losses and claims arising from the negligence or default of party B. An example of such a clause is set out at the beginning of this article. It’s just like the supplier is asking you to provide a private insurance policy for it.

Insurance is an important point – and is used as the basis for a string of other spurious arguments I have been fed to justify harsh indemnity clauses: “Our insurance company requires it”. Sorry, but that is just so much bull-dust. In my experience insurance companies do not control the content of the supply contracts used by their insured clients. While it would not surprise me if there is an exception out there where an insurance company has required such a clause, the insured would be entitled to ask the insurance company: “Why are we paying you a hefty premium if you are requiring us to require our clients to insure us too?”

In other cases you get the argument that “our insurance costs us too much and this is the clause that keeps the premium down and allows us to offer the service at the rates we are offering it at.” This argument is harder to fight. You could call the bluff and ask to see a copy of the correspondence with the supplier’s insurer as evidence of the point being made – but you’ll probably get a “that’s none of your business” response! Your most effective approach in such cases might be to say, “Okay, but if you insist on that over-the-top indemnity, we will have to go with your competitor whose rates are slightly higher but whose contract doesn’t impose a harsh and uninsurable indemnity clause.”

It is on the flip side (ie, arguing for deletion of the harsh indemnity) that insurance is a fair and relevant point to make. As mentioned above, many such clauses slip through and their implications are not properly understood. Perhaps the most severe consequence is that if you end up being liable to indemnify the supplier under such a clause, your own insurance may not cover you!
No punches can be pulled here. If you do not say no to the clause, it may mean you can be uninsured for a loss that materialises and this could of course mean insolvency and bankruptcy.

While I know organisations are unlikely to abandon their unreasonable clauses because of this article I must urge you – consumers of meeting and event services – to say: enough is enough! If enough of you just say no to unreasonable indemnities and walk away from such business, enough commercial pressure may be brought to bear on the organisations using them, to stop doing so.

For further details contact Matt Crouch on (02) 8281 7800 or email mcrouch@bartier.com.au

Tender Moments

One reader tells us of the story of the Melbourne PCO who got her boyfriend to send out tenders to a number of PCOs for management of a dealers’ conference. Unfortunately, the said boyfriend used someone else’s tender and although much of the detail was cunningly changed, he forgot to change the properties on the Word file, thus disclosing the source of the original tender and her dastardly plan. Some were duped, but suffice it to say a few friends were lost when the ruse was discovered.

Getting event attendees seated in a quick and ordered fashion takes practise as any event organiser would know. But not so apparently for the PCO of a prestigious national conference.

With no alphabetically-listed board outside telling attendees what table they were seated on there was a mad-rush for the ballroom at the event with the result being queues seemingly stretching for miles.

To top it off additional tables had to be quickly erected when it was realised there weren’t enough tables and chairs for the group.

Was the event manager being cute on catering numbers or did they forget to provide seats for the many event volunteers? We will never know.

Quad Bike Carnage

A medical company keen on some off-site teambuilding may have wished they’d done something other than quad biking after their less than pleasant experience.

Rain had made the quad bike trails a little more slippery than usual but even the activity operator couldn’t have dreamt of a worse-case scenario.

According to the operator the company GM adopted the persona of a mad 15-year-old teenager the minute he stepped onto his quad bike and immediately began a series of dangerous tricks. His antics apparently spurred the others on to try to outdo what the boss was doing.

And the end result? The GM broke his collarbone, another delegate wound up in hospital with a broken ankle, and yet another had a broken arm. A not-so-nice end to what had up until then been a thoroughly enjoyable five-day meeting.

Goodwill hunting

One mice.net reader asked us to give a big wrap to a Cairns venue who offered to cross-check their guest list against the delegate list to look for delegate bookings that were not on the rooming list.

The PCO was quite happy to accept the extra commission which wasn’t much, but the goodwill was invaluable. See, we can all work together in harmony.

Bureaucratic bungling?

What is it with government departments and conferences? asks one avid mice.net reader. “They say they don’t need a PCO and then they hire temporary staff who have never done the job before?”

“One of the most recent examples I can think of is a department advertising for a conference director on $80K and an offsider on $55K. A PCO would certainly like a slice of that and has the experience to do it so much better.”

A good samaritan who went the extra mile to help a client couldn’t believe his bad luck when he accidentally crashed the man’s rental car.

Millennium Hotel Rotorua sales manager Brett Jeffery was just doing his job when he went to pick up a prospective client for a familiarisation visit. When Mr Jeffery arrived at Rotorua Airport he found the man had already booked himself a rental car. The next day the client was picked up by then Rotorua Convention Bureau manager Sandra Rippey for a sightseeing tour, so Mr Jeffery kindly offered to transport the man’s rental car and luggage to his next accommodation venue. On arrival at the next hotel Mr Jeffery turned the car off and went inside to find a porter.

“The receptionist said ‘You better look behind you because your car’s running away’.”
Much to his horror Mr Jeffery turned to see the rental car rolling forward down the hotel driveway and smashing straight into the side of the hotel.

“I forgot to put the handbrake on. The car was pretty damaged. They say no good deed goes unpunished.”
Luckily the hotel itself received only superficial damage from the accident and after a bit of fast-talking to hotel staff Mr Jeffery was able to sort the situation out. According to Mr Jeffery Millennium had a good relationship with the rental car company which had hired the car out, and he was able to swap cars as if nothing had happened before the client returned.
But the incident didn’t end there. Later that afternoon Mr Jeffery received a phone call on his mobile from the police questioning him about the accident following a complaint.

“They made a claim of reckless driving but it was just the Tamaki (Heritage Experiences) girls playing a prank on me.”
News of the incident had spread around the small industry in Rotorua fast and Mr Jeffery says he was quite panicked for a while until the jokers let him off the hook.

“They had me going for about 10 minutes. I was packing myself for a while there.”
The next day Mr Jeffery had lunch with the same client and Ms Rippey where he confessed the incident.
“The client had a laugh and we ended up getting the business in the end.”

Cooking the books?

Here’s a sordid tale we hope we don’t hear again. Financial reporting for a conference a few years back continues because of a dispute between the PCO and the client over one of the functions of the meeting.

From what we hear the dispute with the PCO is about someone taking a commission on food and beverage at a “very” major city venue.

Somehow the PCO’s client found out what the function should have cost compared to what they paid. It seems it wasn’t the venue’s deception but the PCO who organised the quote and then told the client a higher figure. The PCO paid the venue the lower figure and the PCO’s client paid the PCO the higher figure.

The PCO now says that the “difference” between the charge by the venue and what the client had to pay was for “risk and administration.”
But we beg to differ, as does the individual who provided us with this story.
“There was no risk and the negotiated management fee was to cover administration. Bad, bad PCO,” our reader tells us.

Quick wit

Most people know that there are times to heckle a comedian and times when you should just let them do their thing, as one PCO discovered while on a famil in New Zealand a while back.

After numerous interjections from the PCO the obviously fed-up comedian retorted as a last resort: “If I had wanted to hear from an arsehole I would have farted”. Ouch! Not much more was said from the PCO for the remainder of the trip.

Says one of our readers, what is the first three things usually done by a committee charged with organising a conference? They select a destination, venue and date for the event. The venue sales person asks if the client is using a PCO and when the client says no, gives the client a net or non-commissionable rate.

The client subsequently engages a PCO who finds out what rates the venue has negotiated. The PCO didn’t have a clause in the client contract that allowed for them to charge their time or fee for accommodation-related matters if the venue did not pay commissions (smart PCOs have such clauses).

The PCO said to the venue that they wouldn’t manage the accommodation block and takes bookings for the venue without obtaining a commission. Fair enough. The venue was thus in a bind and their solution offered was to take all bookings themselves. But this didn’t suit the PCO as they were looking forward to a nice swag of commission and it also didn’t suit the client.

The client didn’t want the delegate to have two lots of forms to complete (one for registration and one for accommodation), two cheques (or whatever), and two parties to deal with. Sanity in this case prevailed and the venue took it on the chin and agreed to pay commission to the PCO.

But it doesn’t end there. The client, who had not been informed of any commission arrangements, now knew. The client thought it was money for jam and was now distrustful of both the venue and the PCO. They thus applied the thumbscrews to the PCO wanting to know if commissions were payable on food and beverage, printing and satchels. Of course they were. Disclosing commissions upfront would have alleviated the whole sorry mess.

Cyclone Monica arrived in Palm Cove (April 2006) just as 400 conference delegates and 50 of their children landed at the airport. The many staff of G.E.T. Melbourne on-site for the conference struggled to cope with the deluge. The normal 20-minute transfer from the airport to Palm Cove turned into a five hour marathon for some delegates because of flooded roads.

Many of the resort’s staff were unable to get to work. Those that could, including the general manager, set to work turning rooms around as drenched delegates dried off with complimentary cocktails in the bar.

For the next three days torrential rain and winds made the conference venue a tricky proposition, but with creative use of golf buggies, hundreds of donated umbrellas from the townspeople, flaunting of fire ordinances with barbecue and fire-twirling entertainment brought indoors, special entertainment for the children and lots of good humour, the conference proceeded.

One dinner was turned into a fundraising event for victims of the other major cyclone which had recently hit the area, Cyclone Larry. Amazingly, $70,000 was raised on the night, largely through guests now having first-hand experience of cyclonic conditions.
The event ended up being highly rated by delegates and the clients proving, once again, you can’t keep a good PCO down.