NBTA: Hotel RFP Will Not Include Mtgs.

The National Business Travel Association's recently released 2003 modular hotel request for proposal includes no new meeting or group options, nor will it in the near future. "It wasn't considered," said Wendy Nathan, chair of the NBTA hotel committee and manager of travel services at New Brunswick, N.J.-based Johnson & Johnson. "It's off the radar screen. So few hotel companies look at corporate business in totality, because the meeting business is so different." The NBTA hotel committee at one time had considered expanding the RFP to include meeting specifications, but decided against it. "I can see at some point including space for a request for information about a hotel—how many meeting rooms, for example—but not much past that," Nathan said, adding that any initiatives with standard meeting RFPs should be the responsibility of Meeting Professionals International. MPI is taking part in the Convention Industry Council's effort to standardize many aspects of the meeting industry, including RFPs, in the future. NBTA's changes to the RFP, announced last month, largely are comprised of definition improvements and wording changes (BTN, May 13).