Hospitality
and events

Even though you may find a catering establishment on pretty well every street corner and a party or a major public event takes place somewhere every week, De Koning Vergouwen is one of the few law firms that deal chiefly with this branch of industry.

For hotels, restaurants and cafés as well as events the ‘mixed agreement’ is quite distinctive. Here profound knowledge of business law, administrative law, property, Licensing and Catering Act and Intellectual Property are all required.

Contracts are often a motley collection of agreements between lessees, organizers, lessors and operators. Here furniture and fittings, business name, goodwill of a business, (hired) personnel, house rules, safety requirements, contract with beer brewer, loan for use contracts, contracts of suretyship and bonuses have to be regulated right down to the last detail. Hotels, restaurants or cafés and event organizers have to deal to an increasing extent with legal agreements as well as regulations dictated by the municipality. So exactly which door policy, terrace policy, smoking policy you may -or have to- pursue? When do we speak of the ‘proper’ drugs policy? Which conditions do the house rules have to fulfil? And how can you maintain efficient business operations in an overabundance of rules of public order? Being the initiator of an event, how do you protect your product and good name? De Koning Vergouwen has built little by little quite a tradition in this tricky field with clients like Amsterdam Gaypride or Hotel Arena.

Furthermore in this branch often delicate questions have to be solved practically on the frontiers of the law, like hiring or renting out businesses. And we do not mean just the sporadic rental of a small room, but also the common practice for hotels, restaurants or cafés of ‘leasing out’. Regarding this subject-specific business structure legal questions arise spontaneously with respect to the diversification of risks, profit sharing, responsibility and liability. Good agreements on cooperation between licence holder, manager and/or organizer require exactly the dyed-in-the-wool generalist speciality that De Koning Vergouwen have a lot going for. The fact that catering industry agents and major events agencies refer to our firm these days may be the living proof of this statement.