Being part of a corporate global program can help your hotel increase feeder market and even develop new ones. This can aid you in expanding your global reach.

　　Being part of a corporate global program can help your hotel increase feeder market and even develop new ones. This can aid you in expanding your global reach. Having a lot of accepted RFPs can take you off the risk of dependency on your big producing accounts.

　　Hotels need to educate themselves and especially their sales people how to effectively and efficiently handle RFPs. Here are some things that you need to take note of when dealing with hotel RFPs:

　　1. Read and understand thoroughly the Terms & Inclusions and/or Requirements to Bid. Corporate global programs are quite strict with these. If a hotel is not able to abide and agree even for just one item they are automatically disqualified during the bidding. For example; 6pm same day cancellation, breakfast inclusive, WIFI inclusive, airport transfer inclusive, etc.

　　2. Watch out for “mandatory questions”, "additional items”, or “custom questions”. These questions could be a repeat of the specified Terms & Inclusions and/or Requirements to Bid. Responses to these questions are also highly important. If unacceptable to hotels this could also mean an auto rejection to your bid.

　　3. Make sure to submit bids before actual due dates. Completing bids ahead of time will give you allowance to adjust. For example, in case you will have some issues with the questions and/or ask approval for a special rate offer. It is very vital that you do not miss the opportunity to submit on time as it would be very hard to go to the travel manager and request for an extension. This can reflect badly on your hotel’s image and might have a negative effect on the final decision on your bid.

　　4. Be very aware of re-negotiation requests. Clients can come back to you with another request or an appeal to lower your rates. Make sure to be prepared well ahead of time for these instances. Re-negotiations have a very fast turnaround, most of the time just around 24 hours.

　　5. Make sure that all information loaded is accurate. Responses are very important to qualify the hotel and be part of a corporate global program. RFPs do not have room for guesses and approximations.