The National Business Travel Association has added two templates to its Modular Hotel Request for Proposals designed to help travel buyers with renegotiation efforts and hoteliers with distribution of unsolicited bids in the 2010 hotel bidding season.
The NBTA hotel committee on Aug. 26 announced that it had developed a "renegotiation request" template to standardize the process of revisiting negotiated rates, which occurred frequently during the past year. Using the template, buyers can display their current negotiated rates and specify new requested target rates and amenity requirements for each property. The template also provides hoteliers a standard form for their response.
Many buyers this year have been involved in a constant renegotiation process, as decreasing travel demand drove hoteliers to constantly drop rates. In some cases, standard rates dropped below rates buyers negotiated prior to last autumn's economic downturn
(BTNonline, March 30)."Travel managers have been telling us about the challenges they encounter when renegotiating or receiving a new bid, especially in today's changing economic climate," NBTA hotel committee co-chair Laurie Kazimer, travel sourcing lead for Target, said in a statement. "These new templates will serve as industry standards to simplify these processes that have become more important than ever in effectively managing a hotel program."
The committee also developed a template to give a standard format to hoteliers who want to contact buyers directly to request to be included in their hotel programs through unsolicited bids. With the form, hoteliers can provide all the information buyers will need while buyers will be better able to quickly respond, according to the hotel committee.
Unsolicited bids from hotels have become increasingly common in the current buyer's market, according to the committee.