A sample hotel and agency contract: the clauses, section by section

A hotel agency contract is a short written agreement that fixes which rooms an agency may sell, at what rate, on what payment terms and how either side exits. This article gives an illustrative skeleton, clause by clause, with one sample sentence and one decision per clause. It is not a legal template: a lawyer finishes it.

A hotelier downloads a hotel agency contract template from a WhatsApp group, changes the hotel name, signs it, and a season later cannot say who owed what for the rooms that never arrived. The problem is rarely the missing paper. It is the clauses nobody read out loud. After reading this, you will be able to draft your own skeleton with placeholders, know which decisions are yours to make, and hand a lawyer something worth reviewing.

Does a small hotel need a written agency contract at all?#

Yes, as soon as rooms move on terms you cannot renegotiate booking by booking. A contract is not there to look professional; it fixes the four things every later argument turns on: which rooms the agency may sell, at what rate, when the money arrives, and how either side ends the arrangement.

Without a written contract each reservation is a separate oral deal, and the evidence is an email thread plus a message on a phone that may leave the company with the person who sent it. The contract also sets authority: who at the agency may confirm a booking, and who at the hotel may change a rate. Names, not job titles alone.

Keep it readable. A small hotel's agency contract is usually short, a few pages plus a rate annex; anything longer tends to be signed unread by both sides. Write it for your own property first: your room type names, your board definitions, your release mechanics. A borrowed contract describes someone else's hotel. The sample sentences in this article are illustrative wording, not a legal template; a lawyer admitted in Türkiye finishes the document before anyone signs.

Who are the parties, and which certificate numbers belong in the contract?#

The parties clause names two legal persons with their tax numbers, addresses and certificate numbers, and it is the part a court reads first when a notice is disputed. Use full legal names, not trading names. If the agency trades under a brand different from its registered title, record both and say which one signs.

The agency side carries its travel agency certificate number issued under the Travel Agencies Regulation. Since the amendment published in the Resmî Gazete on 26 July 2024 (No. 32613) (opens in a new tab), agencies must verify accommodation facilities' certificate numbers through the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's database and show them in sales and marketing, and may not market or sell facilities that have no certificate. The hotel side carries its Ministry certificate number and the facility type as certified. Not every certified facility is a hotel, so write the type the certificate states.

Record the notice addresses here or in the final section, and make sure they are addresses someone actually monitors. A notice sent to an office nobody monitors may sit unread, so check that the address works before you sign. Name the signatories with title and a line that each is authorized to bind the party; for groups, say which legal entity contracts and which properties the contract covers.

Illustrative sample sentence: "The Agency declares that it holds travel agency certificate number [●] and will quote the Facility's Ministry of Culture and Tourism certificate number [●] in all sales and marketing material."

What should the period, rooms and rates clause actually say?#

It states exact dates, names the rooms and board on your terms, and puts the price on a basis nobody can misread later.

Period: a start date and an end date, plus how renewal happens. Written renewal beats automatic rollover, because it forces one conversation a year about rates. If rates change by season, define the seasons by date ranges in the annex. "High season" alone means two different things to two offices.

Rooms: use your own room type names and, where the contract commits rooms, the count per type. Board: write the definition into the contract. There is no official definition of board types you can point to, so say what breakfast, half board or all inclusive includes at your property, drinks included or not. Children: age bands and what each band pays, and whether the age is counted at arrival or during the stay. Pick one and write it.

Rates: state the basis, per room per night or per person per night, whether taxes and fees are included, and how a change is notified and from when it applies. Illustrative sample sentence: "The rates in Annex A apply per room per night in [currency] and include [●]; a rate change applies only to bookings confirmed after written notice of [●] days."

How should allotment, release and stop sale be worded?#

Define each word inside the contract, because none of them has an official definition you can rely on, then attach a mechanism to each definition.

Allotment: rooms held for the agency to sell. Release period: the deadline by which unsold rooms come back to the hotel. Free sale: the agency may sell from live availability. On request: nothing is held until the hotel confirms. Stop sale: the hotel closes dates. Each of these terms changes who carries the risk of an unsold room, so read them together rather than one at a time.

Release mechanics need a time, a day count and a time zone: for example, rooms return automatically at a stated hour a stated number of days before arrival unless a name list confirms them. Say who carries the risk at each stage. Rooms in allotment are the hotel's risk until release; rooms the agency has confirmed are the agency's risk, subject to the cancellation clause.

Give the hotel an explicit stop sale right, and say what notice it owes on bookings already confirmed before the stop. Say what happens when the hotel cannot honor a confirmed booking. No legal provision was found that dictates the answer, so the contract must, and your lawyer should draft that sentence.

Illustrative sample sentence: "Rooms in the allotment return to the Facility automatically at [●] on the [●]th day before arrival unless the Agency confirms them by name list."

What must the payment, credit and currency clause fix?#

It fixes who invoices whom, how much credit the agency carries, when payment is due, and which currency the contract may legally use.

Invoice cycle: per stay, per name list or per month. Per month is easier to reconcile; per stay is easier to dispute early. Credit limit and the consequence of reaching it: a defined step such as suspending the allotment, not an automatic cancellation of guests already in house. Payment due in days after invoice, and what late payment triggers. Keep the trigger commercial, not punitive.

Currency: under Communiqué No. 2008-32/34 on Decision No. 32 (opens in a new tab), published by the Ministry of Treasury and Finance, residents of Türkiye may not set the price of service contracts between themselves in foreign currency or indexed to it, except in listed cases. Those cases include contracts to which people without Turkish citizenship are a party and, since the amendment published on 30 January 2021 (Communiqué No. 2021-32/59), accommodation service contracts at facilities certified by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The Ministry's FAQ states that since that date hotel rooms may be let for accommodation in foreign currency or indexed to it.

Confirm your own case with an accountant before you print a currency in the annex. The clause is only as good as the invoicing behind it. Reconciliation: say which document prevails when the agency's confirmation and the hotel's record disagree, and set a window for raising the difference.

Illustrative sample sentence: "The Agency pays invoices within [●] days; the Facility may suspend the allotment while unpaid invoices exceed [●]."

How do you write cancellation, no-show and resale limits?#

With a dated ladder for cancellation, a defined evidence rule for no-shows, and an explicit ban on the agency publishing or passing on your contracted rates.

Cancellation ladder: a date before arrival and a consequence at each step, written as placeholders the hotel fills in. Do not copy another hotel's ladder; your season decides it. No-show: say who is charged, on what evidence, a name list plus the arrival date, and how it is invoiced. Name lists: deadline, format and what the hotel does with an incomplete list. An incomplete list is a booking problem, so the contract should say who owns it.

Resale limits: the agency may not publish the contracted rates on any public site, may not pass them to a third party without written consent, and may not present itself as the hotel. Rate leakage: a net rate that appears on a public site can be traced back through the trail of who received which rate. Keep that trail, and keep it per agency, so that a leaked rate can be followed to the agreement it came from.

Parity questions are for your adviser: the position is not settled in the sources we could check, so do not draft a parity clause yourself.

Illustrative sample sentence: "The Agency will not publish the rates in Annex A on any public website and will not pass them to a third party without the Facility's written consent."

What do complaints, force majeure and notices leave to your lawyer?#

The last clauses decide how a dispute is handled and where it is heard, which is exactly the part a hotelier should not draft alone.

Complaints: a window to notify, who answers the guest first, and how a compensation claim is passed from agency to hotel with evidence attached. Force majeure: name the events, set a notice duty, and say what happens to deposits and to bookings already confirmed when the event ends. Governing law, and the court or arbitration seat: this single line decides where a small claim is fought, so read it before signing.

Notices: address, method, and when a notice counts as received. Decide whether email counts, and if so, which address. Language: if the contract exists in two languages, say which version prevails. Annexes: rate sheet, room type list, name list format. A contract that refers to an annex nobody signed is weaker than it looks. The same logic applies to clauses beyond the allotment itself: each one should point to a document that exists and that both parties have signed.

Illustrative sample sentence: "Notices are valid when sent to the addresses in this contract by [●] and are deemed received on [●]."

What to do next#

Draft the skeleton first, with placeholders and your own rate annex, then have a lawyer review it before the first name list arrives. The clauses fit together as one chain: parties and certificates identify who is bound, period and rates say what is sold, allotment and release say who carries the risk, payment and cancellation say what happens when the plan changes, and law and notices say how the argument ends. Change one and check the others.

When the paper is signed, the rates still have to move without mistakes; the contract loading checklist for putting agency rates into your systems correctly is the next practical step. On the technology side, AI Otel's distribution hub is built, with seed data: hotels publish contracted rates to travel agencies on their own terms, and every quote shows its working, the hotel's net, each pricing rule that fired and the final price. No agency is connected yet. To see it, request a briefing.