Las Vegas Hotel Sues Over Canceled Event

Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas has filed a lawsuit against an Irvine conference planner for canceling a five-day business meeting after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The suit accuses Conference & Travel Management Inc. of using the tragedy as an excuse to break its contract with Mandalay Bay.

The contract allowed CTM to cancel a conference it arranged for Tenet Healthcare Corp. if CTM paid the resort at least $390,000, or 60% of the revenue Mandalay Bay expected to receive for the event.

The Mandalay Resort Group, which owns Mandalay Bay, said in the lawsuit that CTM called one week after Sept. 11 wanting to postpone the late-October conference.

Frank Baptista, CTM’s executive vice president, said his firm tried to change the Tenet conference to a later date after most of the 650 potential attendees expressed reservations about traveling.

But he said Mandalay Bay couldn’t accommodate the group in January, February or March, and thus would treat the postponement as a cancellation.

Baptista said the lawsuit by Mandalay Bay was the first of its kind for CTM, which has 30 to 40 clients and arranges hundreds of events a year.

After Sept. 11, he said, most companies that wanted to change or postpone their conferences were able to do so without penalty.

Officials at Mandalay Resort could not be reached for comment Tuesday. The hotel is seeking damages of at least $10,000.

The lawsuit, which was filed last week in Clark County in Nevada comes as Las Vegas is recovering from a drop in tourism after the terrorist attacks, and shortly after MGM Grand filed a similar suit against a service management company for canceling a conference in October.

“Most of the hotels have been very understanding about accommodating groups after [Sept. 11],” said hotel expert Bruce Baltin of PKF Consulting in Los Angeles. “They just don’t want to lose anybody, they want to rebook them. If anything, most hotels have been more flexible about changing events around, not more rigid.”

Baptista said Tenet has rebooked its conference for January at the MGM Mirage.