<B>Ext. Stay RFP Debuts</B>
By Bruce Serlen
The National Business Travel Association this month released the extended stay component of its electronic hotel RFP form revision. The modular approach to the RFP overall is intended to make the bidding process--in this case, for extended stay properties--simpler and more flexible for both travel managers and hotels. The NBTA in February released the RFP's core pricing module and five other optional modules.
"The NBTA hotel committee is excited to be able to offer this to travel managers for the first time on two counts," said Wendy Nathan, the committee chairman. "First, having a module specifically for extended stay will allow travel managers to truly bid for this part of their program. But secondly, it will allow extended stay operators to properly showcase their properties during the annual RFP process."
The module is intended to be used only by buyers who have a dedicated extended stay component in their program. "This means it's not designed for those buyers who use extended stay properties to supplement their regular transient hotel program," said Nathan, who is also manager of travel services at Johnson & Johnson. Typically, extended stay is defined as a minimum of five nights, though extended stay visits can last for weeks or months. Similarly, rates usually are based on length of stay. In terms of the actual duration of stay, the extended stay module leaves any definition up to the property.
Similar to the revised RFP's five other modules, the extended stay component contains the basic, so-called static data, which is unlikely to change year by year. For extended stay, this means questions on laundry service, grocery shopping and housekeeping--things that would be of serious concern to long-term guests.
Unlike the other modules, however, the extended stay module requests pricing information. "This makes sense because pricing in extended stay properties has its own logic," Nathan said. "Then, too, the pricing questions in the core module don't address length of stay."
"Consequently, managers with extended stay programs would still fill out the core module, short of the pricing grid. We were careful to ensure there wasn't any redundant data in the two modules," said Glenn Erickson, director of business development for Nexus World Services, which works with hotels to facilitate the RFP process and provided input to the committee.
Meanwhile, the five other modules of the NBTA RFP--which are devoted to the hotels' services and amenities, communications and technology, safety and security, geography and transportation and a user-defined field for questions not covered elsewhere--strictly supplement the core module and steer clear of pricing (BTN, Feb. 26).
The hotel committee took an extra four months to finalize the extended stay module because of the special nature of this type of lodging. The entire revision of the electronic RFP now is ready to be used in the negotiation process that begins this summer and culminates in the setting of rates for the 2002 calendar year. "As with the other modules in the revised format, the extended stay module doesn't request more information than can be easily imported and viewed on common Microsoft Office desktop applications, such as Excel and Access," Nathan said. Because the old format was lengthier, travel managers had to break up the data into more than one spreadsheet when importing it, a time-consuming process.
In the same way the old electronic RFP format became an industry standard since it was introduced in the mid-1990s, Nathan and the rest of the hotel committee expect the new streamlined version to become the standard. For 2002, the old, lengthier form still will be available, but Nathan and others expect its use to be limited.
For their part, hotel companies have been eager for the hotel committee to issue the extended stay RFP. "This is an area where corporations don't always realize the benefit of using an extended stay product," said Bruce Wolff, senior vice president for distribution sales and marketing at Marriott International, whose extended stay brands include Residence Inn and TownePlace Suites. "People who are on the road for long periods of time in a location get particular benefits from an extended stay product."
Wolff said the extended stay environment can even help travelers' productivity. "Including that and highlighting it in the RFP process will bring that top of mind to more people," he said, "and they will more likely consider the extended stay product as they determine the type of hotel they need for each trip."
In itself, having a dedicated module brings the extended stay category valuable visibility. "Certainly, on the pricing aspects, but in terms of service and amenities as well, the new RFP module should help to reinforce the ways extended stay differs from other types of lodging," said Christine McNerney, director of travel industry sales for Choice Hotels International, whose extended stay brand is MainStay Suites.
In the past, these points of differentiation could have gotten obscured more easily. "Now, it will be clearer from the point the buyer gets into the RFP process," said Maria Minor, national account specialist at Choice. "We've been a great supporter of the NBTA electronic RFP standard from the beginning and are already preparing internally for the revised form. Any way our clients want to work, we'll be ready.