Hotel allotment contracts: release periods and clauses to check

An allotment contract gives a tour operator or travel agency a block of rooms at an agreed rate for a set period; the release period is the deadline by which unsold rooms must be returned to the hotel. Read the contract for allotment size, release, guarantee, stop-sale, rate validity, cancellation and payment terms.

The contract was signed in November from last year's file with two numbers changed. The following July a release deadline passes on a Tuesday morning, and nobody in reservations can say which rooms went back to the hotel and which are still committed. This guide reads a hotel allotment contract clause by clause, then turns each clause into a rule the reservations desk applies the same way every week.

What is an allotment contract, and how does it differ from free sale?#

An allotment contract holds a fixed block of rooms for a tour operator or travel agency at an agreed rate, and the release period is the date by which the operator must hand back whatever it has not sold.

Allotment, known in Turkish as kontenjan, means rooms are taken out of the hotel's own sellable inventory for a date range and held for one counterparty, whether or not that counterparty sells them. The release period is the cut-off, usually written as a number of days before arrival, after which unsold rooms return to the hotel. The contract must say whether the release happens automatically in a system or must be requested in writing, because the two leave very different evidence.

Free sale is the opposite arrangement: no block is held, and the agency books from live availability until the hotel closes the channel for those dates. On request holds no inventory at all; each booking waits for the hotel to confirm or refuse it. Guaranteed allotment carries no release: the agency pays for the rooms whether or not it sells them, which is why the price is usually lower.

None of these terms has an official definition in Turkish law. They are industry practice, so a badly worded clause cannot be corrected later by pointing at a standard. The wording you signed is the wording you have.

Check the counterparty before the terms. Law No. 1618 defines a travel agency as a commercial organization authorized to arrange accommodation, transport and tour services, and its Article 4 requires an operating certificate (işletme belgesi) from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to operate as a travel agency in Türkiye (source: mevzuat.gov.tr, consolidated text of Law No. 1618 (opens in a new tab), 1 November 2026). Ask for the certificate and keep a copy with the contract.

The same block of rooms should feed every channel from one inventory, so what you commit to an agency is visible against what you sell yourself. That discipline is covered in one inventory across every channel.

How do you read a release period against a calendar?#

Convert the clause into dated tasks: count back from each arrival date, fix the time zone and the day-count rule, and name the person who confirms the release in writing.

First establish the counting convention: days before arrival, days before the first night, or a fixed calendar date. Whether the arrival day itself counts changes the deadline by a full day. Then establish the cut-off hour and whose clock applies; a release sent at 19:00 on the deadline day is late if the contract says 18:00 hotel time.

Establish who triggers the release: an automatic return in the system, a written notice from the agency, or a manual action by reservations. Each leaves different evidence, and the evidence is what settles disputes later. Establish what happens to rooms not released: they stay committed and become a guarantee claim, so the release record is also the billing record.

For example: 20 rooms held for an arrival on 15 July with a 30-day release period. The deadline is 15 June at 18:00 hotel time. The agency releases 12 rooms on 16 June, so 8 rooms remain committed and the guarantee clause applies to them.

Run the check weekly rather than at the deadline. List every allotment whose release date falls in the next 21 days, confirm the count in the system, match it to the agency's written release, adjust inventory and log the result.

What should guarantee terms say when committed rooms go unused?#

A guarantee clause must state exactly what the hotel is owed when committed rooms go unsold, how that figure is calculated, and when it is invoiced and paid.

Separate three different events: a guarantee (payment for rooms held and not sold), a cancellation (payment for bookings withdrawn) and a no-show (a guest who never arrives). Each needs its own clause and its own number, because they are triggered by different facts and argued with different evidence.

Fix the calculation basis: room rate only, or rate plus board, plus taxes and fees, per room-night. An ambiguous basis turns every invoice into a negotiation. Fix the materialization date: the day by which the agency must send its final rooming list, and what happens to rooms that are neither materialized nor released.

Set a floor and a ceiling: a minimum number of room-nights the agency commits to, and a cap on the hotel's exposure, so neither side signs an open-ended number. Decide the evidence: the hotel's own release records and availability reports, who may see them, and how quickly a dispute must be raised.

Decide the invoice: issue date, currency, whether it is an e-Fatura or e-Arşiv (electronic invoice), and the payment window. Confirm the tax treatment with your accountant rather than reading it out of the contract.

What are stop-sale rights, and what happens to bookings already confirmed?#

A stop-sale right lets one side close availability for a date range; the clause must say who may trigger it, how much notice is required, and that bookings already confirmed stand.

Say who holds the right: the hotel only, the agency only, or both, and whether the right covers the whole block or part of it. Say how notice is given: in writing, to a named address, with a minimum number of hours or days, and from when the closure takes effect.

State the obvious in writing: a stop sale closes future sales, not confirmed bookings. A confirmed booking survives it unless the contract says otherwise. Define force majeure narrowly enough to be usable and widely enough to be honest, and say what evidence the invoking side must produce.

Expect the agency to defend confirmed bookings hard. Under Article 51 of Law No. 6502 on Consumer Protection, a package tour is a contract in which at least two of transport, accommodation and other tourism services are sold together at an all-inclusive price, lasting more than 24 hours or including an overnight stay (source: mevzuat.gov.tr, consolidated text of Law No. 6502, Article 51 (opens in a new tab), 1 November 2026). The same article makes the package tour organizer responsible to the consumer when the contract is not performed, or not performed properly, and lets the consumer claim compensation for wasted holiday time. The organizer will pass that pressure back to the hotel.

We found no Turkish provision that tells a hotel what to do when it cannot honor a confirmed reservation. So write the answer into the contract: relocation to an equivalent facility, who pays the difference, who informs the guest, and take legal advice on your own case.

Which rate clauses must be pinned down?#

The rate clause must fix the price, the currency, the board basis, the validity dates and the conditions under which the price may change.

Write exact validity dates, including what happens to a booking that arrives inside the window but departs after it. Name the currency and the mechanism if payment is in another currency; say who bears the movement between signing and payment.

Define the board basis inside the contract. We found no official definition of board types in the current facility regulation, so list what the price includes rather than relying on a label. Decide whether early-booking windows and special offers apply to allotment rooms, whether they can be withdrawn, and how a withdrawn offer is handled for bookings already made.

Cover the small lines that cause the arguments: child and infant policy, extra bed, single supplement, and what happens when the room type held is not available. Ask counsel about any parity wording that restricts the hotel's public prices; the current legal position in Türkiye was not verified for this article, so treat it as a legal question, not a commercial one.

Keep the arithmetic visible: how the net rate was built from the public rate should sit in a contract annex. The same build-up is what makes a quote trustworthy, which is covered in net rates for travel agents and clear quotes.

What do cancellation, no-show, name lists and payment terms need to say?#

These four clauses decide who pays when a booking changes at the last minute, so each needs a definition, a deadline and a number.

Cancellation: tier the charge by days before arrival, state whether it is per booking or per room-night, and say whether the tiers apply to released allotment rooms or only to confirmed bookings. No-show: define it precisely, for example no arrival by a stated hour with no prior notice, and separate it from a late cancellation so the two charges do not overlap.

Name lists: set the deadline and format for the final rooming list, and say what the hotel does with incomplete names. Note that the guest identity notification (KBS) remains the facility's own legal duty; a rooming list does not replace it.

Payment: state the deposit, the balance date, the method, the currency, who pays bank charges, and what the hotel may do if payment is late. Reconciliation: say how the agency's invoice is matched to the hotel's records, who signs it off, and how quickly a discrepancy must be raised. Group bookings inside the allotment need their own handling, from block to rooming list to a single bill, and that process should be written down before the season starts; see block, rooming list and master folio for group bookings.

How do you turn each clause into a rule the reservations team applies the same way?#

Write one line per clause in a reservations sheet: the trigger, the action, the owner and the evidence, then run a weekly check against it.

The sheet has six columns: contract clause, trigger date or condition, action, owner, evidence kept, escalation path. If a clause cannot fill all six, it is not yet a rule. The sheet belongs to reservations, not to the sales office's contract folder; a rule nobody on the desk can see is not applied.

The weekly release check is the core routine: every allotment with a release date in the next 21 days, the count confirmed in the system, the agency's written release matched, inventory adjusted, result logged. The monthly review looks backwards: which allotments materialized, which guarantees were triggered, which clauses produced a dispute, and which wording should change before renewal.

Keep one owner per rule; shared ownership of a deadline is how deadlines disappear. At renewal, read the contract against the sheet rather than against last year's file, and change the clause where the sheet kept failing.

What to do next#

Take this season's allotment contract, mark the six clauses covered here, and build the reservations sheet before the first release date arrives: one line per clause, one owner per line, one weekly check against the calendar. The clauses protect the hotel only when someone on the desk applies them on the same day, in the same way, every week.