A hotel group RFP lands in the inbox with 180 questions, a security annex, a pricing spreadsheet and a deadline three weeks out. The sales lead forwards it to product, product forwards the security tab to the one engineer who knows the answers, and pricing waits for the founder. Three weeks later the team submits late at night, or asks for an extension it may not get.

It does not need to take a month. This checklist breaks the response into a ten-business-day plan for hotel tech vendors answering hotel groups and management companies, with the items that most often cause delay flagged in each stage.

What the benchmarks say

RFP work is measurable, and the data is consistent. Loopio's 2024 RFP Response Trends and Benchmarks report, summarised by Winning the Business, surveyed 1,663 bid and proposal professionals. Teams spent around 30 hours on each bid, down from 32, and 59% took six to ten business days to respond. Average team size was eight people. Top performers, those with win rates of 50% or more, were more selective: 81% used a bid/no-bid process, and they spent two hours longer writing each response.

Responsive's 2023 Strategic Response Management study of 718 executives found response leaders win 58% of their responses against 50% for laggards. The habits behind that gap are organisational, not literary: 92% of leaders said executives contribute to or review large RFPs, against 55% of laggards, and 100% of leaders had well-defined roles and responsibilities, against 59% of laggards.

An earlier Loopio survey of 650+ respondents in 2020, reported by MarketingProfs, put the average at 23 hours and nine people per response. Either way, the effort is a few working days spread over two weeks. A month is a process problem.

Day 1: decide whether to bid

• Confirm the group fits your ICP by size, segment and brand mix. Our guide to ICP for independents, chains and management companies covers the criteria.

• Check integration fit: the group's PMS, CRS, payment provider and brand standards. If a required integration does not exist, decide now whether you will commit to building it.

• Find out who wrote the RFP and why. An RFP shaped around a competitor's feature list is a warning sign.

• Check whether you have spoken to anyone at the group in the last six months. A cold RFP with no prior relationship has a low ceiling.

• Confirm you can meet the deadline and the commercial terms, such as payment terms, liability caps and data hosting location.

• Write a one-paragraph bid/no-bid decision and get the executive sponsor to sign it off by end of day.

Day 1–2: set up the response

• Name one response owner who runs the timeline. Not the person writing the most answers.

• Split the RFP into sections and assign each to a named person with a due date: functional, technical and integration, security and compliance, implementation, commercial, references.

• Submit clarifying questions early. Most RFPs have a question deadline that falls well before submission.

• Book two internal reviews in the calendar now: a draft review on day 6 and a final review on day 9.

• Pull your approved answer library. If you do not have one, this RFP is where you start it.

Day 2–6: answer the sections that cause delay

Security and compliance

• Keep a current security pack ready: policy summary, hosting and data residency, encryption, access control, penetration test summary, incident response and sub-processor list.

• If you store, process or transmit card data, state your PCI DSS scope and status clearly. The PCI Security Standards Council notes PCI DSS v4.0 added 64 new requirements, 51 of which became effective on 31 March 2025, and it stresses that merchants depend on compliant third-party service providers. Hotel groups ask accordingly.

• Answer what is asked. Pasting a 40-page policy into a yes/no field slows the evaluator and reads as evasive.

Integrations

• List every integration the group named and mark each as live, in beta, on the roadmap with a date, or not planned.

• For live integrations, name a hotel using it in production if you have permission.

• Explain who maintains the integration and who supports it when it breaks. Our post on how integrations sell hotel software covers why this answer decides deals.

Implementation

• Give a property-by-property rollout plan with a pilot cluster, waves and dates.

• Name the roles you provide and the roles the group must provide.

• Include data migration, training and a hypercare period. A clear migration plan is often what separates two similar products.

Pricing

• Use the group's template exactly, even if it does not suit your model.

• Add a short pricing note: unit of charge, implementation fees, volume or term discounts, and what is not included.

• Offer two or three options at most. More than that makes comparison harder for procurement.

• Get pricing signed off by day 5, not day 9.

References

• Choose references that match the group's segment and region.

• Ask permission before naming them and brief each reference on what the group cares about.

• Prepare a short case summary for each with the before and after figures the customer has agreed to share.

Day 6–9: review and tighten

• Run the draft review against the scoring criteria, if the RFP states them. Weight effort to the highest-scored sections.

• Read every answer as an evaluator would: does it answer the question in the first sentence?

• Check consistency across sections, especially pricing, implementation dates and integration status.

• Get the executive sponsor to read the executive summary and the commercial section.

• Final review on day 9, with time to fix what it finds.

Day 10: submit and follow up

• Submit a day early if the portal allows it. Portals fail on deadline day.

• Send a short note to your contact confirming submission and offering a working session or demo.

• Log the RFP, outcome and reasons in your CRM. Win or lose, ask for feedback, and use win-loss interviews to learn why.

• Update the answer library with every new or improved answer within a week.

Where hotel tech responses usually slip

• Brand standards questions nobody owns. Groups that run several brands may ask how you handle each brand's standards and reporting. Assign one person to answer them consistently.

• Owner and operator questions mixed together. Some questions reflect what the asset owner needs, others what the operator needs. Answer for the right audience, as we describe in the hidden approvers in hotel software deals.

• Roadmap promises. Writing "yes" to a feature that is six months out creates a problem in implementation. Mark it clearly as roadmap, with a date you can keep.

The ten-day plan at a glance

What the RFP does not decide

The written response is rarely the whole decision. Hotel groups weigh relationships, references, the operator and owner view, and how the demo holds up. Treat the RFP as one step inside your account plan for the hotel group, and expect the procurement process at a management company to continue after you submit. RFP response is part of the sales motion in our hotel tech GTM strategy, not a separate admin task.

If your RFPs are taking a month and still losing, a free revenue leak audit will show where in the hotel group sales process the deals are slipping.

Frequently Asked Questions