Buyers To Get Free Hotel RFP Software At NBTA
The National Business Travel Association will hand out free software to travel buyers at its convention this summer that will electronically transfer its just-completed 1998 Official Hotel Request For Proposal.
The software viewer-a browser that accesses the RFP-will be provided by JBH Travel Audit Inc. and Silicon Valley-based Travelware, and will be demonstrated at a hands-on lab session during the July convention in St. Louis. While the software will not be available before then, the new RFP long form and file specs will debut on the Websites of NBTA and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives this week.
The software plan is subject to NBTA board approval, which is expected this month.
The two associations also are devising higher levels of the basic software viewer, which travel managers may purchase from JBH or Travelware.
"For basic needs, the complimentary viewer will do the job," said NBTA hotel committee member Dan Geller, director of corporate sales, West Coast, for ITT Sheraton. "All travel managers will have to do is take it back to their office, put it in their disk drive, load it and they're ready to go. Now there is no excuse for any company not to jump on the electronic wagon. We wanted to make it easy for everyone so that they will all join the game."
The free software, which is compatible with Windows 95 and Windows 3.1, allows viewing of both the short- and long-form RFP, and also allows user to edit data. Companies that need to add analysis and reporting tools to the basic program may buy the Level 2 software, which will include five to 10 standard database reports as defined by ACTE and NBTA, and Level 3, which will include customized reports, allowing corporations to add their own local fields. The associations have not yet set a cost for the upgraded software.
JBH and Travelware were among five vendors that NBTA evaluated to provide the software (BTN, March 3).
The upcoming 1998 long-form RFP, which trimmed the number of fields from 437 to 420, also has added such features as a room-category column that allows a choice of standard or upgraded rooms, Geller said.
While members who cannot attend the St. Louis convention may contact NBTA and ACTE for the free software, which includes an instruction booklet, Geller said it is nonetheless "imperative" that they come to the session in St. Louis. "This will help them with the orientation to the product," he said.
Arming travel managers with free software for the upcoming season should spur the hotel chains to submit RFPs electronically, Geller said. "The bottleneck was not on the hotel side-it was on the receiving side," he said. "Once the corporations are capable of this, they will create the demand for the hotels."
But the industry won't flip the electronic-transmission switch overnight, noted Janice Hanson, president and chief executive officer of Denver-based JBH Travel Audit Inc.
"We're ready to really get aggressive with this, but we can only do that to the extent that the hotels can handle it," Hanson said. "This upcoming bid season is still going to be very paper intensive for the majority of corporations and hotels." While the basic viewer transmits to both chains and individual properties, JBH has found that less than 20 percent of unaffiliated and franchised hotels have e-mail capability.
JBH, which currently outsources the RFP process for more than two dozen corporations, will debut a new product this year that turns the RFP property profile and rate data into an intranet Website as well as a hard-copy book.
In talking with Fortune 100 Corporations, JBH discovered that "more of these corporations than we had expected are planning an intranet version of their hotel directory in place of a print version," Hanson said. "One big advantage of the intranet version of the directory is that the company can pull a hotel that doesn't meet their standards.