When
released next month, the new version of the Global Business Travel Association's
standardized hotel request for proposals will have a decidedly global tone, having
evolved from the largely U.S.-centric version of the tool that has existed for
several years.
While
GBTA's hotel committee traditionally has applied annual tweaks and updates, the
latest overhaul came after an 18-month review of the RFP tool not only by the
hotel committee but also by international task forces and sponsor Hilton
Worldwide.
GBTA
Foundation executive director Daphne Bryant said globalization was the primary
goal, and minimizing the number of questions was a secondary aim. Even with
adding new modules related to program globalization, the new RFP is 10 percent
smaller than the previous version.
"We
included folks from around the world, volunteers of buyers, suppliers and
third-party intermediaries involved in helping us pull this together to
globalize it and streamline it," Bryant said.
Much
of that work came by going through each component of the existing RFP and
questioning whether it was applicable to buyers outside the United States and
whether it still had relevance for selecting a hotel program, said GBTA hotel
RFP steering committee chair and travel buyer Laurie Kazimer.
"When
we took a look at all of the modules as they existed previously, we went
through a full review of each question and used those guiding principles to
make the decision of whether it has global relevancy and whether it's applicable
to a buyer on decision-making on selecting a hotel," Kazimer said.
The
new RFP, for example, added a module asking about blackout dates, which European
buyers in particular had requested, she said. It updated room type designations
and removed rate-type designations—rack, corporate and consortia—that no longer
are relevant benchmarks as they are being phased out of hotel pricing, she
said. The committee and task forces also removed from the document some listed amenities
that now are standard or no longer relevant, such as speaker phones in guest rooms,
Kazimer said.
Additionally,
the committees changed the date format to conform to ISO standards, she said.