<B> E-RFPs Ready For 2000</B>
By Mary Ann McNulty
Will the new century prove to be the right time to automate the tedious annual hotel request for proposals process? Hoteliers, industry committees and at least five vendors poised to garner the business certainly hope so.
Preparing for the 2000 bid cycle, expected to heat up as soon as the weather starts to cool, a new NBTA/ACTE standard hotel RFP is now available; new vendor Innsight Information Group is making its entrance in the market; and established player Ixata.com Inc. (also known as RFP Express), which has been acquired by SecurFone America Inc. of San Diego, plans to pump even more money into development and marketing to garner more customers.
Existing vendors JBH Travel Audit, Lanyon Inc. and Travelware Information Systems also are beefing up their efforts as they strive to convince hundreds of corporations--not the dozens that have used products to date--to automate the process (<I>BTN,</I> March 22).
Considering suggested changes to the standard hotel RFP, a subgroup of the NBTA hotel committee cautiously has agreed to clarify definitions and fix some minor problems that created data inconsistencies last year. Most changes relate to decimal place formatting--rate fields should use two, while distance and all other fields should use just one--and a mandate that all phone numbers be separated by hyphens.
"The committee was unanimous in deciding to maintain the structure and keep the number of fields and their order intact to avoid drastic changes in systems configurations," said Rick Wakida, chair of the hotel committee, who just joined Airtouch Communications.
Meanwhile, newcomer Innsight Information Group, Indianapolis, is entering the market this year with the Hotel Bid Express product it tested with three companies last year. The company was founded by H. Robert Peper Jr., a 15-year hotel veteran determined to find a way to streamline the currently arduous process for all involved. The solution is an outsourcing business that not only helps corporations develop their electronic RFPs, but also distributes the RFPs to specified hotels, along with all the software hoteliers need to respond. As part of its full-service offering, the company follows up with non-respondents and dumps the data into a database that it updates and periodically routes to travel managers via e-mail.
"The biggest problem has been a lack of standards. Data came back from hoteliers in all different formats," Peper said. Last year, his company developed Bid Submit, software that allows hotels to respond to an RFP in a common format, via either an e-mail attachment, modem dial-up program or disk.
To simplify the process for hoteliers, the software allows respondents to enter static data, such as address and number of rooms, just once, while customizing others, such as rates or last room availability, for each corporation out for bid. Once the data is in the Hotel Bid Express database, hoteliers only will need to update elements that change.
Another application, called Hotel Bid View, helps decision makers view the responses and a status list to determine if the bid has been accepted, is pending or hasn't been received, Peper said.
Ixata also began drafting plans for a nationwide marketing campaign, following its acquisition last month by SecurFone America. That company in April sold its assets in prepaid wireless services and announced plans to invest in other complementary segments.
Developed and beta tested over the past two years, Ixata's product allows travel buyers and meeting planners to automate their RFP processes, using the Internet, e-mail, telephone or fax.
"We're on track to have as many as 150 clients this year," said Fred Gluckman, Ixata chairman. The acquisition provides Ixata "with an expanded management team, access to new funding and the ability to support a national product launch with major travel agencies, online travel portals and other travel industry distribution channels," he said. Ixata will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of SecurFone.