Imagine sitting down at your desk each morning and having 30 business proposals waiting for you—and they all must be evaluated today, because another 30 will be arriving by tomorrow, and the next day, and so on.
Well, that’s basically the life of a group-sales manager these days at an individual hotel or at a brand’s regional sales office.
Given the ease with which requests for proposal (RFPs) can be sent through platforms such as Cvent, Hubli, ReadyBid and Amadeus MeetingBroker, the volume coming into hotels requires reps to evaluate each RFP in a time-efficient way. And that approach is unforgiving to planners who don’t realize that quality of information is the most critical factor in the number of RFP responses they receive.
On the flip side, planners who put the right information in the right places on an RFP will get their business counterparts to quickly respond and negotiate the details that bring about a contract offer.
Here, two veteran hotel-sales leaders provide the blueprint to RFP success.
What’s Most Attractive to Hotels?
First, “planners should understand how hotel sales reps are measured, bonused and promoted,” said Mike Ferreira, founder and CEO of Meetings Made Easy, a meeting brokerage that specializes in site selection, RFPs and contracting. Prior to starting that firm in 2017, Ferreira was in hotel sales for 22 years at Bellagio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas plus other meetings-heavy properties.
“Reps’ goals are almost always based on guest-room revenue, followed by food and beverage revenue, followed by space-rental fees and maybe resort fees and ancillary spending,” he noted. “Your RFP needs to have those details up top to grab a rep’s attention.
“The arrival and departure pattern is really important too,” Ferreira said. Why? Because groups that don’t follow Sunday or Monday arrival and Wednesday departure, or Wednesday arrival and Saturday departure, likely prevent the hotel from accommodating two other meeting groups who do use those patterns.
On the flip side, RFPs that show some flexibility in event dates give properties more opportunity to make things work.
“The biggest problem we have is that most RFPs state, ‘Event dates are not flexible,’ but then we find out later on that they were flexible to some degree,” said Paul Bashaw, vice president of global sales, meetings and destination experiences for Pyramid Global Hospitality, which has more than 250 hotels, resorts and conference centers in its portfolio including Benchmark Resorts & Hotels. “If a planner lets us know that shifting the event just one day either way is possible, it gives us much more opportunity to make it work.”
Alternatively, being able to shift a meeting one week earlier or later in the same pattern can often boost RFP success.
“Sometimes there’s an in-house event or even a citywide event that makes a given week really tight for guest rooms,” Bashaw said. “Being able to move a meeting to the same days in a different week could work really well for everyone.”
Numbers Make the Strongest Case
With the RFP formats used by Cvent and other online platforms, Ferreira recommends planners use the paragraph boxes on the first page to create bullet points demonstrating why the program would be valuable to the property.
“You’re showing a rep, ‘These are the reasons why you want to respond to my RFP rather than another group,’” Ferreira said. “And remember that your RFP gets compared against every other opportunity the hotel has over those dates, including transient business.”
In light of this, providing event history is critical, along with budget ranges for each major element of the upcoming program. “You should list the hotels you’ve used the past couple of years for this meeting plus the room rate you paid and what your final room-pickup numbers were, as well as the room rate you need for this year,” Ferreira advised.
“And with F&B, I like to give a range,” he added. “So, if you spent $100,000 on it last year, perhaps tell them that you can spend anywhere from $80,000 to $130,000 for this event.”
Because the number of peak-night guest rooms and total F&B spending must correlate to the amount of meeting space the group desires, planners who provide a range on F&B spending allow a rep to make a counteroffer that could work for everyone.
“We could ask that the group keep one more meal event in house in exchange for a lower space-rental fee or a lower guest-room rate,” Paul Bashaw said. “If the group tells us where they have any flexibility, we can be faster and more detailed with our response.”
Bashaw noted that some RFPs state the group won’t pay a resort fee in particular because attendees won’t have time to use the wider property offerings, while other meetings have a firm cap on costs for airport transfers and special-event transportation. In those and other tricky budget situations, the property might be able to help if the group can be flexible elsewhere.
“We’ll ask, ‘Where do you need some added value to make this work?’ Then, it’s our job to listen and be creative,” Bashaw said. “We might agree to concessions or perhaps room upgrades or other on-property amenities if those are important to the group. We also have good relationships with all our suppliers, so sometimes we can help even with an outside service.”
How Long to Get a Response?
For meetings at least one year out and with less than 500 rooms on peak night, it’s reasonable for planners to ask properties to respond to an RFP in 48 to 72 hours, Ferreira said.
“You’re not asking them to block out inventory over those dates; you’re only asking them if they have the rooms and space over those dates, and can they bid on your event or not?” he noted. “When I was a salesperson, that’s the time frame I lived by.”
Further, “it gives the rep enough time to say, ‘We’ve looked at your numbers, and we’d like to change a couple of things around to make this work.’ They’ve started the negotiation, which is all a planner wants.”
Once all of a meeting’s critical specs and terms are agreed upon, a contracted agreement is the next step. However, Bashaw stressed that properties cannot hold rooms and space for one group and ignore RFPs from other groups seeking those same dates for more than 48 hours without a signed contract.
“If a planner wants right of first refusal, we’ll commit to blocking out that room inventory—but not for long,” he notes. “Let’s sign the deal and start working on your meeting being everything you want it to be.”
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RFP Questions About Hotels’ Human-Trafficking Defenses
Meeting Professionals Against Human Trafficking (MPAHT) was founded in 2017 by industry veteran Sandy Biback, providing information and resources to planners and suppliers on how to fight human trafficking.
The organization recently released a series of questions planners can add to their requests for proposals (RFPs) so that hotels can demonstrate that they actively address the issue on property.
The RFP questions can be found at https://mpaht.com.
In fact, as of January 2026, hotels have greater ability to curtail human trafficking. That’s because Hilton, Hyatt and IHG Hotels & Resorts announced a human-trafficking prevention training curriculum that’s now available to the entire hospitality industry at no cost. The training is available for hotel owners, operators and brands through at least the end of 2026.
Developed in partnership with the three hospitality companies plus Protect All Children from Trafficking (PACT) and Unboxed Training & Technology, the program is “survivor-informed” and uses live-action video storytelling that’s available in English and Spanish on PACT’s website.
Participants will receive technical support throughout the training, scheduled reminders to encourage completion and a certificate upon successful completion.
The collaboration demonstrates the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) Foundation’s mission to unite the industry against human trafficking through its No Room for Trafficking (NRFT) initiative. The three hotel companies are represented on the foundation’s NRFT Advisory Council, whose members shape the hotel industry’s anti-trafficking efforts and survivor support.
The new training will be featured alongside existing training launched in 2020 by Marriott International, which has been accessed more than 2.6 million times by industry workers.
“By listening to survivors and learning from hotel teams on the ground, we gained invaluable insights into where guidance could be strengthened to deepen the impact of our existing training,” said Joan Bottarini, CFO at Hyatt and chair of the NRFT Advisory Council. “That understanding helped us design updated training to better equip hotel teams in real-world situations.”
