NBTA Holds Off On New RFP

<B>NBTA Holds Off On New RFP</B>

By Bruce Serlen

The National Business Travel Association will not be making any adjustments or enhancements to its standardized request for proposals hotel form this year for negotiations affecting 2001 rates. "We're staying with what we've got this year," said Marianne McInerney, executive director.

Industry sources said the NBTA hotel committee had drafted changes to the electronic version of the widely accepted form that would clarify the fields of information requested, particularly for hotels in international destinations. Despite the committee's recommendations, however, it appears that NBTA decided to focus on gaining acceptance for the existing RFP standard rather than fine-tuning the mechanism at this time.

According to McInerney, NBTA will make modifications to its other RFP forms, including air, car and travel agencies, and will announce them at its annual meeting in Los Angeles next month.

If the NBTA were to make changes in the hotel form, the modifications would need to be in place before July 1, when most travel buyers begin the RFP process.

"Even if the NBTA should announce changes in the hotel form now, it would be too late for us to accommodate them," said Glenn Erickson, manager of sales and marketing for JBH Travel Audit, which markets RFP ProSource software. "All our clients start with the NBTA form, but then customize it with their own addendums."

Information not included in prior versions would be particularly difficult to incorporate.

"Nobody would be able to adhere to changes at this point, especially if the field of information is being requested for the first time," said Brad Fred, president of Lanyon, which markets RFPassist software.

The NBTA decision came as a surprise to many in the industry, since it has continued to revise the electronic hotel form regularly as a way of not only attracting new users, but of being responsive to existing users' feedback. Yet, NBTA has gone far in advancing the hotelRFP standard and the changes the committee drafted this year were relatively minor.

In the meantime, hotel sales managers said they were interested in working more closely with travel buyers on the 2001 negotiations than in the past to rectify the problem of negotiated hotel rates not being loaded into the GDSs in a timely fashion--a particularly acute problem last year.

For buyers, working more closely with hoteliers should ensure that rate negotiations are concluded early enough so that approved rates can be loaded into the system by the start of the new year. For hoteliers, the goal is to be able to finalize rates on the basis of one bid, not two, and also get them loaded on time.

"The year 2000 was an exception to how the system is meant to work," said Joe Carino Jr., director of corporate sales at Preferred Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. "People may have been cautious about loading rates before Jan. 1 for fear they would not be there after Jan. 1 due to the Y2K effect. These obstacles won't exist this year."

Regardless, attention will focus this year on getting customer information earlier in the preliminary phase known as request for information.

"Ideally, customers will provide full disclosure of their hotel requirements for each destination. The deeper down you can drill, the better," said Fran Linton, director of global corporate travel for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide.

"If the early phase goes well, you ease the entire RFP process," she added. "The earlier we can get customers' input--not only relevant data about their travel patterns, but their guidelines for the bid process--the quicker we can get the required information back to them."

Here, the national sales office functions as gatekeeper. "We direct requests for information to the local property and then refer it back--in an integrated, consistent way--to the customer," said Alice McQuade, director of worldwide accounts for Radisson Hotels & Resorts.

The objective is to avoid having to renegotiate once you're into the RFP phase. "The more succinct the information we're given is, the better we can put forward our best rate. Then, hopefully, we'll be able to dispense with renegotiating at a later point when time has already gotten tight," said Monica Lowry, national director of sales for business travel at Wyndham Hotels International.

"Certainly, it makes sense time-wise for us to be able to provide a rate once, based on thorough information, than have to revise the bid later because of incomplete information," Linton said. Once rates are agreed upon, there will be a larger window for them to be entered promptly into the global distribution systems.

In addition to national sales duties at their respective companies, Carino, Linton, McQuade and Lowry sit on the NBTA hotel committee.

Fortunately, to a large degree, RFIs are static. "Especially for mature programs that use a similar portfolio of hotels year after year, there won't be that many new requirements," Carino said.

But for customers whose travel patterns have changed in the year, there may be different cities involved or increased volume to certain cities. Considering mergers and acquisitions, mre travelers may be visiting the offices of subsidiaries as well as their own offices.

"What we're most concerned about here is the portion of the hotel spend that's unpredictable," Lowry said. "Sales-oriented travel, for example, is difficult to anticipate in advance, as is any travel that's project driven."

On the hotel side, a hotel company may have upgraded or expanded facilities at a particular property. "We'll want customers who've used that hotel in the past to know this," Carino said.

The same applies with reflaggings. "If a hotel in a specific market joins the portfolio as a result of a rebranding, we'll want our customers to know that," McQuade said. "But we won't wait for the RFIs to communicate this. When we think it's important news, we communicate with our customers on an ongoing basis."

A standard form notwithstanding, individual differences are inevitable. "For as many customers as there are, each proceeds in a slightly different way," McQuade said. "Addendums are a case in point. Many companies add questions to the standard form to get extra information. Typically, these revolve around location--from the company's offices to the hotel--and proximity to the airport."

RFIs also get more complicated for hotel companies with multiple chains. "Being given the overall hotel spend in a city is a good starting point," Linton said. "But in cities composed of numerous sub-markets, knowing how this number breaks down is more beneficial." This includes brand type and price points--and the number of properties being considered in each category.

Credit card data best show where travelers are going in a given city. "The closer the travel buyer can pinpoint the specific geographic areas where travelers are going will determine the number of selections we offer in a given city," Lowry said.

A sensitive area concerns competitive bids. "It helps us if we know the competitive set the customer is dealing with. Customers suspect it's because we're interested in ascertaining the rate, when in fact it's the range of product we're interested in," Linton said.