written by Robert Carey, a meetings industry vet who's held editorial positions at Successful Meetings, Meeting News, MeetingsNet, and now at Meetings Today.
If you ever want to make a meeting planner and hotel sales rep wince at the same time, just ask this question: “How do you feel about the request-for-proposal process?”
For planners, waiting for hotels and resorts to respond to their event RFPs can be intensely frustrating, especially when responses come from fewer properties than expected. However, many planners don’t realize just how many RFPs come into the sales office of hospitality companies every single day via email and other platforms.
Here's an inside look:
“I receive about 25 RFPs daily, and others on my sales team see similar volume,” says Paul Bashaw, vice president of global sales for Pyramid Global Hospitality, a leading hospitality management company with more than 250 hotels, resorts, and conference centers in its portfolio, including the group’s independent collection, Benchmark Resorts & Hotels.
And while planners want responses from properties as soon as possible, much of the power to make that happen lies in their own hands. Why? Because the quality of information in their RFPs is the single most critical factor in the number of responses planners get and how quickly they get them.
Bashaw says there are 4 things planners can do to get their RFPs noticed and prioritized by hotel sales teams, and to quickly come to an agreement that works for the group and the hotel. Here they are:
Be specific with dates and budget ranges—and with any areas of flexibility you might have.
“The number one issue we have with RFPs is that most of them state, ‘event dates are not flexible,’ but then we find out later on that they were flexible to some degree,” notes Bashaw. “If a planner lets us know that shifting the event just one day either way is possible, it gives us much more opportunity to make it work.”
For instance, arrival on Sunday rather than Monday often makes it easier to place a meeting at a group’s preferred property and at their preferred room rates. Or, arrival on Wednesday rather than Tuesday keeps the property on its preferred pattern for groups, providing more opportunity to find available guest rooms and meeting space.
Alternatively, being able to shift a meeting one week earlier or later in the same pattern can often boost RFP success. “Sometimes there’s an in-house event or even a citywide event that makes a given week really tight for guest rooms,” Bashaw says. “Being able to move a meeting to the same days in a different week could work really well for everyone.”
Other information that lets properties respond effectively to RFPs is the group’s acceptable range for guest-room rates plus budget ranges for food & beverage plus other meeting elements.
With that information, the sales team can piece together an offer that requires just a few decisions from the planner to reach an agreement. For instance, “when we know total F&B spend, we could ask that the group keep one more meal event in house in exchange for a lower guest-room rate they might desire,” Bashaw says.
The bottom line: “If we know the group has any type of flexibility, we can be faster and more detailed with our response.”
List the areas where concessions would help the group in return for being flexible.
Bashaw notes that some planners question resort fees because attendees won’t have time to use the wider property offerings, while other meetings have a firm cap on costs for airport transfers and special-event transportation.
In those and other tricky budget situations, a property’s sales team might be able to help if the group has demonstrated some flexibility in other areas.
“We’ll often ask, ‘Where do you need some added value to make this work?’ Then, it’s our job to listen and be creative,” Bashaw says. “We might agree to concessions or perhaps room upgrades or other on-property amenities if those are important to the group. We also have good relationships with all our suppliers, so sometimes we can help even with an outside service.”
If possible, wait for at least a few detailed RFP responses to come in before making a site decision.
Bashaw says that he saw a statistic recently about how quickly, on average, the first property response reaches a planner after an RFP was sent: 72 minutes.
His take: “If an RFP says it must have a response within 24 or 48 hours, we will do that. But we don’t want to be the type of respondent who is quickest simply because they say they have those dates available—then they sort through the group’s details and see it probably won’t work. That wastes everyone’s time.”
Instead, if a planner allows a longer window for responses to come in, “we can build a detailed proposal that considers all the factors the planner listed in the RFP,” Bashaw adds. In that time, the hotel sales team “can fully evaluate your business to give you a plan that fits your specific needs.”
For instance, “if we see in the past several years that you’ve preferred resort properties , or you’ve mostly used a specific region of the country or have a regional rotation, we can get you connected with the right properties in our portfolio and they’ll already understand your specs and terms. This gets you farther along in the process than properties who responded just because your dates work for them.”
According to Bashaw, the ideal time frame to deliver a customized proposal that makes a planner’s site-selection and contracting work significantly easier: 5 to 10 days.
Once you agree to a proposal, don’t wait too long to sign the contract.
With all of a meeting’s critical specs and terms addressed and agreed upon, a contracted agreement is the next step. However, Bashaw says that properties cannot hold rooms and space for one group and turn away other groups seeking those dates for more than 48 hours without a signed contract.
“If a planner wants right of first refusal, we’ll commit to blocking out that room inventory—but not for long,” he notes. “Let’s sign the deal and start working on your meeting being everything you want it to be.”
