One day after Marriott International announced it would cut
group booking commissions at managed and franchised hotels in the U.S. and
Canada from 10 percent to 7 percent, Maritz Global Events president David
Peckinpaugh said it and Maritz-owned Experient have received a stay of
execution of sorts.
Marriott's planned March 31 commission cut won't apply to those
firms, which have a "temporary exemption," according to Peckinpaugh.
Though he knows when that exemption ends, he declined to share and deferred
instead to Marriott to share more details. A spokesperson for Marriott told BTN
the company could not share details of specific contracts.
As of deadline, HelmsBriscoe wasn't yet ready to provide a
statement and ConferenceDirect could not be reached for comment.
"There's still a lot to be figured out,"
Peckinpaugh said. "Marriott, obviously, is a big brand. They have a lot of
inventory in the U.S. and Canada, but they're not 100 percent; there are a lot
of other properties. We're a global company. We do business all around the
world, and while this is important in a key market for us, it's not the only
market. Will it have an impact? For sure. How big of an impact is still to be
determined."
For the time being, Peckinpaugh is advising customers and
team members to take a deep breath. "This is all new," Peckinpaugh. "There's
always that immediate reaction to things and then we've just got to let it play
out, and that's going to take time and you know the market has a way of sort of
leveling itself out. We think that'll be the case in this issue."