Current RFPs have 284 questions
Travel management company Carlson Wagonlit (CWT) is looking to simplify its request for proposal (RFP) process for hotels looking to supply rooms, Peggy Mulder, its senior project leader of the Hotel Solutions Group (EMEA), said.
The RFP process for suppliers currently involves some 284 questions she said at the ACTE-MS-UK Forum in London today (October 15).
Ms Mulder acknowledged that, with some 60,000 hotels in CWT's database, that was a lot of questions, even though some RFP processes asked a lot more.
"We are consistently looking to innovate our products towards clients, but also towards suppliers. How can we make the process smoother?," said Ms Mulder.
She also said that CWT still needed the information to be able to respond to the buyers' questions, making the system difficult to change.
The simplified process is not likely to appear this year however, but Ms Mulder confirmed that they were "in the development stage".
The RFP process in general has come under attack in recent weeks, with Ian Leat, Marriott International's head of agency sales, terming the current system a "mess."
He said contracts were agreed on rates and room nights but the "contract process is not worth the paper it is written on" and that there was now "no integrity and no compliance". It led to "so much time being wasted by hotels, agents and corporates".
A similar point was made today at the ACTE MS forum by Katherine Gershon, BMI's sales and marketing director: "An enormous amount of time is spent negotiating deals with corporates. I want to see people delivering on those deals."
She added that if corporates delivered on their agreements, "it would mean that we wouldn't have to have all these renumeration models", which ultimately would lead to greater transparency and reduced management costs.
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