Felicity Calm had worked since 2019 as an event planner at the Paradise Lodge Hotel, Appleton. The
Question:
Felicity Calm had worked since 2019 as an event planner at the Paradise Lodge Hotel, Appleton. The Hotel had a leisure centre attached to it with indoor facilities and two banquet halls. She had a written agreement with the hotel. Under this she was paid a regular amount as a "retainer", she had to be available every afternoon to provide planning information sessions for clients. The hotel brochure advertised "planning information sessions from resident professional". Clients booked sessions direct with hotel reception (receptionist checked with her first whether she was free); the fee was paid to hotel, which deducted 10% and paid the rest over to her without any further deductions, (the retainer was also paid gross). She could use hotel facilities for her own events but paid a fee to the hotel for the hire of the rooms. Admittedly fee was quite nominal.
Arrangements seemed to have worked satisfactorily: she never received any complaints. Over the last three months there seemed to be fewer bookings from clients, but she made up for this with her own events. All these sessions were logged because the hotel had security gates, so there was a record of people coming for information sessions.
Last week hotel manager (Mr. Blake) asked her to call into the hotel office. Mr. Blake told her that her contract would be terminated as from the end of March. The reason given was that there was much less demand for information sessions generally (nature of clientele was changing) so there was no call for a resident professional. Mr Blake also implied that she had been using the rooms for events without notifying the hotel - against her agreement and hotel lost money.
Felicity refutes this. The management had decided to keep the rooms available and allow the public to use them, but the hire fees would be increased to cover the cost of maintenance. She would be able to book the rooms and use them for her events as before, but the costs would be greatly increased.
Felicity said she was very upset at first, and then felt angry over this treatment. She felt that the dismissal was not justified: she thought that the hotel management had not done enough to promote the information sessions. She had asked permission to organise promotional seminars the hotel, but this suggestion had been turned down. Hotel clients in the past had been complimentary about her work, so she did not think she had been treat fairly.
Advice on a claim the management for unfair dismissal.
Management Accounting
ISBN: 978-0132570848
6th Canadian edition
Authors: Charles T. Horngren, Gary L. Sundem, William O. Stratton, Phillip Beaulieu