CMS guide to hotel industry issues: dispute resolution

United Kingdom

The benefit of including negotiation and mediation provisions into a contract is that they force the parties to address these procedures before launching into battle. There is no guarantee of success, and sometimes swift recourse to court will be called for, but having a dispute resolution procedure in the contract at least enables the parties to propose mediation without fear of being the first to blink. Almost invariably, a resolution of a dispute that the parties have agreed between themselves at an early stage will be preferable to a decision imposed by a court after a lengthy, expensive and uncertain fight, and that must be something that is worth trying for.