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Corporations and associations have outsourced meeting-planning functions to third-party planners, who are independent contractors. While the corporations and associations remain responsible for the meetings’ content, independent planners typically handle all other details, in particular, finding venues and negotiating contracts. Most of an independent planner’s business depends on a reputation for fair dealing, referrals, and continued relationships. Thus, the best planners are careful to ensure that all parties are aware of all contract provisions, including those for commissions. Planners also ensure that the hotels treat meeting clients fairly when not all rooms in the block are picked up and it is necessary to invoke attrition clauses.

This paper deals with the related issues and problems of hotel reservations, cancellations, no shows, holdovers, early departures, overbooking, oversales, upgrades, walks, and the associated non-performance penalties or compensation. Specifically, we concentrate on non-performance penalties related to late cancellations and no shows, early departures, and walks. Because of the growing importance of the meetings, incentives, conventions, and exhibitions market, special attention is paid to group reservations, group sales contracts, and attrition clauses which penalize meeting planners for not picking up the agreed upon number of blocked room nights. Comparisons are then made with the cruise, airline, and car rental industries. Comparative statistics show that overall, hotels have outperformed the airlines and car rental agencies, but not the cruise lines. We conclude with recommendations for greater efficiencies in managing non-performance penalties or compensation for the hotel industry.

Discusses previous research on the disincentive effects of some management performance measures on capital investment and the relationship between agency mechanisms (responsibility centre performance measures, tax incentives, compensation schemes and ownership influence) and investment behaviour. Uses a sample of US manufacturing firms in two industries to examine their investment behaviour from 1973‐1982 and relate it to the agency mechanisms applying to the investment decision makers. Finds the use of profit and net return on investment as management performance measures has a significant negative correlation with the investment; but that ownership influence and long‐term incentive compensation are positively related to it. Recognizes the limitations of the study and considers its implications for the use of performance measures, long‐term incentives and tax incentives.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the municipal bond market for issues of small cities operates differently from the market for issues of large cities. This research verifies differences in the determinants of net interest costs between a sample of small cities and a sample of large cities issuing general obligation debt during 1982. In particular, for the small city sample being unrated was not a significant factor in determining net interest costs, supporting claims that small unrated cities are able to substitute other sources of information for ratings and place their issues without paying higher net interest costs.