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This article shows a different end of an RFP process - the one where the hotel is the vendor. Typically, a hotel that offers meeting spaces can integrate an RFP request into their sites allowing easy access to event planners interested in the hotel. When an event planner submits for an RFP, the hotel has a responsibility to answer in a timely, personalized manner in order to attract the planner. If a hotel has meeting space they would like to sell for business, they should definitely consider a software that allows them to answer RFP's in real time. As the article stated, "By leveraging your CRM, automation, and personalization during the RFP process you will ensure a high-quality sales pipeline and more qualified leads."

This article discusses how the traditional vendor RFP (Request for Proposal) model is no longer the ideal way to integrate the right technology marketing that a hotel needs. The traditional vendor RFP model is time-consuming and expensive, and with the way that technology is constantly expanding and changing, hotels need to stay up-to-date with technology more and more frequently, which can mean this process is wasting time and money on an ever-increasing scale. Furthermore, it is not always an accurate indicator of the kinds of technology a hotel might need, especially what a hotel might need in the future, and it is difficult to determine who would best be capable of knowing what the property will need or what exactly to ask for in an RFP. The article talks about three alternatives to the traditional model: the Scorecard model, the Digital Marketing Partner Interview model, and the Trusted Partner model. With the Scorecard model, hotels have a checklist of things they need and can check off each point from each potential vendor. With the Digital Marketing Partner Interview model, which is similar to the traditional vendor RFP process, except that the interview focused on finding a Digital Marketing Partner that aligns with the hotel's management philosophy, values, and culture in order to find the right partnership. With the Trusted Partner model, the hotel works with one particular company with whom they share common goals and objectives, and they work together to solve problems and adapt new technology as the hotel's technological needs are manifested over time.

Various things to consider when going through a RFP process are: * Make sure you set a timeline and deadline. * Do not rely only on your company's procurement offices alone to do the work for you. * Look for regional vendors also that might offer better and competitive. * Do research on what the competition is doing and using. * Respond to all RFP's and follow through the whole process.

It is interesting to see how digital this process has become in the time I have been in the hotel business. It is a great movement though as it allows hotels to get faster communication with groups than they had previously.

Cvent and Destination Marketing Association have joined as alliance partners. This was announced in January 2013. According to DMAI, Cvent will provide meeting professionals with more educational opportunities and promote the use of destination marketing organizations. The purpose of promoting DMOs is to show they can be the a point of contact. DMAI supports this because they are looking to support the meeting community and advocate why DMOs are a valuable source for meeting professionals to go to directly. With this alliance, CVENT has integrated information from the empowerMINT website by DMI into its own Destination Guide. DMAI foresees this will help meeting professionals quicken searches during the RFP process. Added to the Cvent website is a new feature to the RFP process which allows planners to add DMOs and CVBs on every RFP they send. After reading the article I found this to be an interesting alliance because I think both organizations will be able to help each other make meeting professional's lives easier. Cvent is a popular program in the events industry since it allows you to fill out one RFP and send it to multiple companies over the internet. DMOs are important part of the industry, which can help a planner plan an event in an unknown destination or provide contact information for additional venues or products. Integrating information will allow meeting professionals to save time but still be able to focus on the event. An important area I believe it promotes is the use of DMOs, which makes it more convenient for people to find DMOs in specific regions. DMOs have a great impact on the event because they know the region, especially if a meeting planner is not from the area. Ultimately this alliance will help further the important value DMOs bring to the meeting community.

Destination Hotels & Resorts has implemented SpeedRFP. SpeedRFP represents the most robust version of the RFP tool currently available to hotels. The hotel RFP's are routed directly to Delphi sales and catering system. This system also allows for Global and National Sales Offices to be involved in the RFP process.

It was recently brought to my attention that Donald Trump has expanded his portfolio with the $150 million dollar purchase of Miami's Doral Hotel & Country Club. I was casually watching the coverage of the 2012 World Golf Cadillac Championship on NBC and saw Ivanka and Donald on the screen but just brushed it off because of their well known passion for golf. To be honest, it was more exciting for me to see Watson fall to Rose after missing a birdie putt in the playoff round. Anyways, after searching Market Watch for 'IT Investment' and 'RFP' I stumbled upon this article and it all made sense. I am now pleased to summarize the exciting $200 million dollar investment Mr. Trump made with intentions to "reposition all aspects of the resort" resulting in a "greatly enhanced guest experience." Although not explicitly stated, I assume this investment will also include a 'renovation' of the current IT structure of the hotel and country club to increase productivity, revenue and ultimately ROI. Linda Robertson, from the Miami Herald, reported on March 8th that Mr. Trump stated, "to have 800 acres in a city like Miami -that opportunity will never arise again." It will be interesting to see how The Trump Organization follows through on their investment and achieves their goal of making Doral a "world-class facility benefiting of the resort." This article also mentions that The Trump Hotel Collection had been selected by GSA as the preferred developer for Washington D.C.'s The Old Post Office after an "exhaustive" Request For Proposal review. After researching the topic I could not find for what exact reasons he won, besides money. I will take a further look into the news. A lot of exciting new developments for The Trump Organization in the recent few months.

Cvent, the world's largest cloud-based provider of event management, venue selection and web survey solutions, operates the number one marketplace for group meeting business in the works and has driven $3.4 billion in meeting spend through the Cvent Supplier Network through the first half of 2012. The strong network provided by Cvent gather the international booking outside of North America and increase 42% meeting volume based on its strong network. Vice President of Sales for the Cvent said the network bring all market participants together and to improve the sourcing process and deliver value for everyone invloved. The value includes more than 200,000 hotels and special event venues worldwide, providing one-stop shopping for meetings buyers and sourcing professionals. The network also extends suppliers' reach to new customers helping hoes maximize their existing sales & marking resources and increasing their opportunities overall. Cvent also developed a platform hotels can use to help hotels develop response templates to provide faster answers to planners, allowing hotels to pre-populate RFPs with basic information and clone responses to common requests. It also proactively guides planners, helping them create better RFPs by, for example, sending a warning prompt when a venue cannot satisfy a request such as number of sleeping rooms.

Delphi, by Newmarket Inc., is a Property Management System that continuously improves its ability and popularity year after year. As of November of 2014, Delphi has released its latest version, Delphi 2015. Globally speaking, there are over 100,000 Newmarket technology users that access these systems in over 150 countries daily. Delphi is a PMS system that can collect, distribute and manage RFP distribution within any set of properties. Recently, they adapted StarCite RFP integration and are announcing a partnership with MeetingBroker, another reporting engine. Both StarCite and MeetingBroker allow proposal requests to automatically populate in selected Delphi accounts, bridging the gap between consumer and seller much more quickly and accurately. I have personally used Delphi on a daily basis over the past year at work and I can honestly see the huge benefit these types of systems can have. It's ability to interface with Synxis, Opera and other room reservation systems is crucial in successfully reaching perfect occupancy numbers. On an event management level, it can merge legal-binding documents specific to that event. At the same time, it can hold a certain amount of guestrooms or certain event space for certain prices at certain times. These room holds interface with reservations and front office departments while the space holds interface with catering, banquet, accounting, and convention services departments. Delphi is an incredible tool that is the true foundation to property-wide events. It's ability to manage rooms, space, menus and revenues is a lifeline to the success of many properties.

The event management space is more becoming more competitive. Now hotels and event planners are seeing these as an additional source of revenue. This article focuses on tips how events and conferences can use strategies to automate certain practices to capture a wider target audience all while spending less time and money.

This is a great example of success by implementing new technology in business. It is important to recognize the right tools to use to grow. I also think using the "big name" as Sabre Hospitality Solutions can help make decisions easier as the company is famous for it's kind of business.

This article summarizes the results of a study examining the usefulness of technology tools for event planning. Technology aids in the venue sourcing process as well as RFP generation and organization. This type of technology is also a useful tool for forecasting budgets and tracking financial KPIs. IN addition, it serves as a great communication tool connecting planners with vendors as well as customers.

This kind of new tools can really make a great contribution to the whole tourism and hospitality industry. The software provide a way for corporate travel managers and agencies a way to detect the hotels which dispaly higher room rates to corporate travelers. There hotels will be removed from choices. As a result, it provides the travelers with more choice and reduce corporations' costs. And the competition in this industry will be more fair.

Hotel ProposalPro Creates and Tracks Professional Proposals and RFP Responses; Shares Leads Throughout an Enterprise to Increase Sales and Revenue

Hotel ProposalPro works either as a seperate entity, or in conjunction with any of Hotel SystemsPro's other programs, such as SalesPro. It allows management companies to share leads in a more productive fashion, as well as helps with creating and closing contracts with clients. I am personally jealous at this point. I am required to use Delphi.net, which has been "undergoing a transistion" to .LDC for the last 8 months (which has yet to make it to me). The functionality of Delphi is not nearly as user-friendly as some of the other programs, such as SalesPro. To hear that SalesPro is now having the option of adding on ProposalPro, just makes the program that much more desireable to me. I'm sure it has it's flaws as well, as every program does, but I would really like to make the change to almost any other program.

Great article that links the management side with the planners point of view. It gives a planner some insight into where they should push and pull at the hotel and when to let the process work. Sometimes when you are planning an event you believe your event supersedes another other and you "deserve" the hotels undivided attention. Those are unrealistic expectations. They give tips how to utilizes the hotel properly, how to communicate effectively with the hotel so everyone walks away with a great event.

Many HRIS choices are available at different price points providing different levels of functionality. Given the importance of the choice the employer is making, the package selected should meet its current needs and have the flexibility to grow and expand with the organization into the foreseeable future. However, constraints from budgets, hardware and time will affect the choice made.

As a full time event planner I have learned that softwares are the best tool to have when working on this industry. The reason why I wanted to share this article is because I learned about so many software that I didnñt knew before and feel that they work great or at least look amazingly well equipt.

This article provides a list of the best event software systems that are used by companies such as Hilton, Marriott, Westin, Johnson & Johnson for event planning. In the case of hotels, some of these event planning tools such as Cvent & Tripleseat can also be used to receive leads that can be turned into bookings should the client accept the rate at which the RFP has been submitted by the venue.

The article talks about major trends in tourism events, ranging from green initiatives through F&B to the 2nd largest reason people go to events is networking opportunities and providing quiet areas where people can network in is a good idea. More events are being planned so it is necessary to book event venues early.

Like everything nowadays is evolving, also the meetings are evolving in order to stay trendy and appealing for consumers. Meetings are growing exponentially YOY at a rate of between 5-10% according to the prestigious CWT meetings and events company for 2020 (without counting coronavirus). The reality is that the meetings industry also needs to evolve in order to stay in business with the new trends, clientele and times. This list provides 19 trends that every event planner needs to consider to make their event a success, including but not limited to the new demographics in the world (millenials).

This article is about 19 event trends that event planners should be informed about. People are expecting different things from events that in the past years where not expected. Trends have changed, for example, it is a trend now to have minimalistic events instead of gaudy ones. Now people also expect creativity out of the event and to have a unique event. People also care about security of the event and fast WI-fi. All these trends are important to know and will continue changing with the years.

This paper is designed to give human resource professionals a blueprint to follow for any type of human resource software selection, from stand alone applicant tracking systems to fully integrated HRIS and Payroll solutions. Software selection is invariably a more complex process than we originally estimate and one with long term consequences for an organization. It requires a careful and thoughtful approach to fully address the issues and impacts related to your decisions. Some steps may be combined or performed concurrently, but the authors strongly believe that human resource professionals will optimize their selections by following the process as presented Step 1: Teamwork Step 2: Goals Step 3: Big Picture Step 4: Future Needs Step 5: Technical Environment Step 6: Budget Step 7: Specs Step 8: Build vs. Buy Step 9: Research Step 10: Literature Step 11: RFP Step 12: Evaluate Step 13: Demos Step 14: Evaluate Again Step 15: Decision Points Step 16: Check References Step 17: Demo Again Step 18: Evaluate Again and Select.

Cvent, a meetings technology company, has gathered feedback from meeting planners and venues and responded by adding 100 enhancements to their online product. The company is looking to better the users experience and provide easy to use technology. The company's web survey, event management, strategic meetings management, and supplier network have all been improved with new technology. I think this type of business between suppliers and buyers in the meetings/events industry will be the main form of communication in the future.