Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: Having to buy one thing to receive something else

Never heard of it.

There may be some contexts in which the principle applies, usually in a regulated industry such as transportation or public utilities. Amtrak can't make you buy a ticket to New York if you only want to go to Chicago, and your phone company can't make you subscribe to its DSL service in order to have a 'talk' line.

Further, antitrust and unfair competition laws might conceivably affect some product-bundling schemes if the public interest were broadly affected. I can't think of an example.

However, in general, sellers can package their productes and services pretty much however they want, as far as I know. For example, go to a hardware store and see how much stuff is sold in plastic display packages. I recently had to buy an assortment of eight faucet washers to get the one I needed.

Another example is that wine retailers often have to buy slower-moving varietals like middle-quality merlot in order to get an allotment of the winery's hot-selling, short-supply cabernet or pinot.

If the hotel and the convention center are under the same ownership, I see nothing wrong with this. If the ownership is separate, it's remotely possible there is a collusive agreement that would violate an antitrust or pro-competition law. Oddly, if the hotel policy were the reverse -- if you had to book convention space in order to get a hotel room -- that could violate a kind of common-carrier or public accommodation principle of law that says innkeepers, etc. must accommodate all on equal terms. But that's not what's happening in your example.