Force majeure clauses that were rewritten after 2020

The contract sat on my desk for three days before I read the force majeure clause, and that delay is the whole point of this post. We had a policy summit booked for September 2021, about 410 attendees, and the hotel’s force majeure language still said “acts of God” without once mentioning a pandemic, government closure, or public health emergency. I read it again on the third day and caught the real problem: the clause let us cancel for a covered event, but it didn’t say what happened to our deposit of $84,000 if the event was postponed rather than cancelled. That gap cost us two weeks of negotiation and a contractor we lost to a competitor who had already rewritten their terms.

I’m Imani Branch, and I plan association and policy events in Washington DC. Since 2020 I’ve read more force majeure clauses than I have hotels-and-resorts contracts, which is saying something. The pandemic rewrote what planners and hotels expect from each other, and if you’re still working from a template that predates March 2020, you’re carrying risk you don’t need. This is a guide to the clauses that changed, the language I now insist on, and the provisions I still push back against.

What force majeure actually covers now, and where the old language fails you

First, the named events list. Modern clauses in contracts I’ve signed since 2021 name specific things: epidemic, pandemic, public health emergency, government ordered shutdown, travel restriction, quarantine directive, and often “act of a governmental authority.” One contract I reviewed for a July 2022 conference in Poughkeepsie named “shelter in place orders” as a covered event, which felt oddly specific until I remembered the prior March. That level of naming matters because a judge or an arbitrator reads the list as written. If pandemic isn’t on the list, you don’t get to argue it was implied.

Second, the standard shifts from “impossibility” to “impracticability.” This is the change I care most about. A clause that requires performance to be impossible means you can only invoke it when the event cannot happen at all, which is a near impossible bar for a policy briefing that could theoretically move to Zoom. The rewritten clauses I now see from better hotel partners use language like “materially hindered” or “commercially impracticable.” That shift gives you room when attendance drops by 60 percent because your members won’t travel, even though the event technically could still run. We lost a spring forum in 2020 precisely because the venue’s clause held to impossibility, and we ate the balance of the room block.

Third, the notice and cure requirements. Old clauses required notice within a set number of days, often 10 or 14. The rewrites I’ve seen push that window out and add a cure period, which means the hotel gets a chance to propose alternative dates before either party can terminate. One contract I signed for a February 2023 event at a conference center in the District included a 30 day notice window and a 15 day cure period. The hotel used that cure period to offer us a September date at the same rate, which actually solved our problem. The clause worked because it forced conversation rather than termination.

The deposit and mitigation clauses you should negotiate before you sign

The deposit is where the old force majeure clauses did the most damage, and it’s where your attention belongs. Most hotels ask for somewhere between 10 and 25 percent of estimated total revenue as a deposit, and for a policy summit that means real money. On a $350,000 estimated spend, a 20 percent deposit is $70,000 sitting in the hotel’s account before you’ve booked a single speaker. The force majeure clause determines what happens to that money when the event doesn’t occur, and the old language usually said nothing, leaving you to negotiate in the middle of a crisis.

The rewritten clauses now address deposits explicitly. The better language, and I’ve seen versions from several major hotel chains in the Washington market, ties the deposit refund to the timing of the force majeure event. If the covered event occurs more than 60 days before the meeting date, you get the full deposit back. If it occurs within 30 to 60 days, you may receive a credit toward a future event at that property, valid for 18 months. Within 30 days, the hotel keeps a percentage, often half, as a cancellation fee. Those tiers feel fair to me because they acknowledge the hotel has already spent money on staffing and pre event preparation.

The mitigation clause is the quiet addition that most planners miss. A good force majeure clause in 2025 includes language requiring both parties to take reasonable steps to mitigate damages, which means the hotel must try to resell your function space or room block before it charges you the full cancellation fee. I had a contract for a June 2024 event at a hotel in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania where the mitigation clause expressly required the hotel to market our cancelled dates to local corporate clients for 21 days before any cancellation penalty applied. They sold 60 percent of our guest rooms to a regional manufacturing association, and our penalty dropped from $42,000 to roughly $16,800. The clause paid for itself in one conversation.

What your compliance team tells you about these clauses, and what you should confirm yourself

For pharma and medical device clients, the compliance officers I work with are strict about the per head spending caps on meals and entertainment, and they want the force majeure clause to address what happens to those caps if the event changes format. Most of my pharma clients cap dinner between $75 and $125 a head, and if a covered event forces the meeting to shift from in person to virtual, the cap questions multiply. Does a catered box lunch sent to attendees’ homes count against the per head cap? The force majeure clause won’t answer that, but the conference cancellation clause in your master service agreement might, and you should check before you sign anything that ties cancellation terms to a per head figure.

A practical checklist for your next contract review session

Check for a mitigation clause. If it’s absent, ask for language requiring both parties to resell or mitigate before penalties apply. Confirm the notice window is workable, at least 21 days, and that there’s a cure period that forces a conversation about rescheduling before either party walks away. Then look at whether partial force majeure is addressed, because the event that affects 40 percent of your attendees is more common than the one that cancels everything. Finally, run the force majeure language past your compliance or legal team, not after you sign, but before you sign, so they can flag anything that conflicts with your industry rules.

One more thing I’ve learned the hard way: the force majeure clause in the hotel’s preliminary proposal is never the final version. I’ve seen venues send a marketing proposal with one clause and a contract with another, and the difference was the entire basis of a difficult dispute. Always compare the signed contract against the proposal’s terms, and flag any discrepancy in writing. That single habit has saved me twice this year alone.

Force majeure clauses will never be exciting, but they’re the difference between a cancelled event that costs you a deposit and one that costs you the relationship with your client. The 2020 rewrites are here to stay, and the planners who know what to look for are the ones who keep their budgets intact. What’s the headcount for your next meeting, and what does your current contract say about public health emergencies? Send me those two details and I’ll tell you where the clause will bite.