By Lee Campbell, Executive Director & Director of Conference
These ideas are inspired by the session “RFP Reconstructed” at the ASAE Annual Meeting on August 11, 2014, presented by Rachel Benedick, Mary Kreins, Christine “Shimo” Shimasaki.
If you are an event planner you know the Request for Proposal (RFP) is one of the most important documents in your arsenal and its contents can make or break your event.
Here are a few tips on making sure your RFP is as ready as you are.
Make Sure the RFP is Complete
Hotels need complete information about an organization’s conference program in order to offer the best proposal. Be thorough, but be concise.
It’s important to accurately reflect your conference program, needs, and budget. The hotel team will review all aspects of your information from the RFP to determine if your program is a good fit for the hotel, and vice versa.
Don’t Forget to Include Your History and Expectations
- Organizational goals (e.g. What does your organization hope to gain from the event? How will you measure success?)
- Expected number of attendees and the demographics of your group
- History of the organization’s conferences the last 3 years
- Hotel and city locations
- Sleeping room pickups
- Food & Beverage history
- List of the expected and requested concessions
- Date pattern
- 3rd Party Information (will you secure your own AV Companies and Tradeshow Decorator Companies?)
Make Good Connections
Did you know? EmpowerMINT.com is a resource that hotels will check to investigate an organization’s history to determine if a partnership will be a good fit. Organizations can also use this site to register an official RFP document in order to connect with hotels.
Want to know more about association management? Contact us info@imiae.com to find out more about what IMI Association Executives can do for your organization.
Well Done! This is great summary for event RFP’s and I could see that it could be generalized to help even more industries and businesses. Getting complete specs and an understanding what has worked well in the past and what your exceptions are, will greatly improved your chances of success. This is well worth the time.
Thanks for the great feedback, Darren! We appreciate you stopping by.