The hotel "management agreement"

Abstract

The present work analyses the regime of the hotel management agreement (HMA), the contract used more fequently by hotel chains in order to achieve an international and national expansion. In the HMA, the hotel owner puts the manager in charge of the hotel, paying him a management fee, and the manager gives the hotel owner the benefits. Its legal regime is similar to the contract of services when the interest of the manager is solely the management. Nevertheless, in the most common HMA, the manager is interested in integrating the hotel in its hotel chain, and in using an standarized know how and its own trademark. In this case, the legal nature of the contract is similar to the agency contract, so the Agency contract Act is applicable, but never as a compulsory norm, because the hotel manager is preponderant in the HMA, and does not deserve more legal protection than the hotel owner.