I’m very proud to share that the SpeedRFP buyer community reached member # 10,000 today. It is important to point out that to be qualified as a member, they must have submitted at least 1 RFP using the system. If you take in to consideration that each of these members likely plan multiple meetings and events on an annual basis, they represent millions of hotel guests each year. This active community is growing at roughly 50 new members every day.

For hotels and resorts, SpeedRFP is quickly becoming the the eRFP system of choice, and is already available on over 200 well known hotel sites such as The Broadmoor, Wynn|Encore, and Atlantis. As far as chain or hotel group sites are concerned, in addition to EliteMeetings.com, SpeedRFP is available on Destination Hotels & Resorts, Dolce Hotels & Resorts, Preferred Hotel Group, Flik Conference Centers, Hospes, and Corinthia Hotels & Resorts, with many others on the way. All in all, SpeedRFPs can be sent to over 3,000 hotels and resorts worldwide (to see a current list of “SpeedRFP enabled” sites, click here).

You may also be interested to know that there have been 11,522 event RFPs submitted via SpeedRFP. Those RFPs were sent to 22,304 hotels or resorts, which means there is an average of 1.9 hotels included on each SpeedRFP. This ratio is well ahead of the industry average and is likely a breath of fresh air for all sides of the business. We’ve heard many complaints regarding how much time (and money) is being spent by hotels that are receiving and responding to RFPs that have little chance of being booked at their property. With an average of 2 hotels bidding on 1 piece of business, hotels have a great chance of winning the business, and planners can expect to receive quick and thorough responses as a result.

There are many more great facts and features I look forward to sharing with you in the coming weeks. For now, feel free to take a look at our recent press release and you’ll see some of the exciting enhancements on tap for SpeedRFP in 2012.

The team is preparing to head to Las Vegas for the highly anticipated IMEX America, and we hope to see you there. If you plan to attend, drop by the Elite Meetings International booth (#1068) to get a sneak peak of EliteMeetings.com 4.0! In fact, you might even be able to provide a helping hand in developing some of its new features. After all, we built the site for you, so the more input you provide…the better EliteMeetings.com will be in 2012!

On that note, we’ve been listening very closely to your feedback and suggestions regarding SpeedRFP and recently made some substantial upgrades. Take a 10 minute tour of the system, and I’m very confident you’ll be able to save weeks and weeks of time as a direct result. This invitation includes meeting professionals, independent hotels, chain hotels, CVB’s, and consortia alike, so it doesn’t matter what side of the business you are on, SpeedRFP is ready to take over the eRFP world!

Also, if you plan events that need an extremely flexible appointment scheduling system, then please ask for a tour of FaceTime Appointment Scheduler. You’ll quickly understand why it is one of our most popular products, as it is creating ROI for event attendees like never before.

Who’s attending from Elite? Here is a list of our team members that will be there:

Therese Adams
Kelly Foy
Nikki Hathaway
Travis Hodge
Skye Holyfield
Carol Lynch
Caroline Musy
John Washko
JJ Waters
Alda Egurrola-Wienke

Come by and say hello!

We’ve recently updated how RFP recipients can manage their RFPs by adding the ability for lead coordinators to assign an RFP to other colleagues.

How-to Assign an RFP for Hoteliers:

To best incorporate SpeedRFP into your workflow, we’ve built “Assign RFP,” which allows a hotelier to assign an RFP they’ve received to a colleague, prompting them to respond. Here’s how to assign an RFP:

1. View the incoming RFP by clicking the link in your email notification, the link in your dashboard alert, or the “View RFP” link on your “RFPs” tab
2. Click the “Assign RFP” button at the top of the RFP
3. Enter the Email Address of the person you want to assign the RFP to
4. If the First and Last Name haven’t already been provided, enter those as well
5. Check the box if you want to continue receiving email notifications for the RFP
6. Click the “Assign” button

Your teammate will immediately receive an email from SpeedRFP to let them know that they have been assigned the RFP.

How-to Respond to an RFP for Hoteliers

Have you been assigned an RFP or are you a lead coordinator who would like to respond to an RFP? Here’s how to respond:

1. View the incoming RFP by clicking the link in your email notification, the link in your dashboard alert, or the “View RFP” link on your “RFPs” tab
2. Click the “Respond” button at the top of the RFP
3. Choose if you would like to send a proposal or decline the RFP
4. Submit the corresponding form

The planner will immediately receive an email from SpeedRFP to let them know that you’ve responded!

Let us know how these features work for you by clicking the “Feedback tab on the right side of the SpeedRFP.com website.

SpeedRFP is Growing

I started out my day today wondering just how many hotels are now capable of receiving SpeedRFPs, and was very pleasantly surprised when I learned planners can now use SpeedRFP to submit eRFPs to nearly 3,000 hotels worldwide. It seems that every day we see a handful of new hotels and resort adopting this time-saving technology, and we see exponential growth on the horizon.

Our objective when creating SpeedRFP was to provide a consistent and stress-free experience for meeting professionals who want to submit RFPs online, while providing a form that any hotel or resort in the world could use that was the same regardless of what website its on. We saw there was an extreme amount of inconsistency out there from website to website, and the industry has been begging for a consistent and APEX compliant form. Imagine being able to go to any hotel website and be presented with the exact same form you encountered on the previous website, and better yet, not having to re-key any of your RFP info because all of your RFP data and attachments are waiting for you on every hotel website that has SpeedRFP.

As is the case with many technology solutions, you need adoption by the market before you know if your product is viable. If the initial results are any indication, SpeedRFP is on its way. Both meeting planners and hotels alike have been adopting SpeedRFP at an impressive pace. In fact, the community of meeting planners that have submitted 1 or more online RFPs using SpeedRFP has now surpassed 5,600, and that number is growing by 25+ every single day. I’m excited to see how many SpeedRFP users there will be at the end of the year…and the year after that.

On the hotel side, there are nearly 3,000 hotels that now can receive and quickly respond to SpeedRFPs. In fact, many hotels are taking advantage of SpeedRFP’s integration with MeetingBroker, which results in all SpeedRFPs being delivered directly into Delphi, Delphi.net and Daylight systems regardless of what website the RFP was submitted from. In addition to the Elite Certified hotels available on EliteMeetings.com, you can now find that now the familiar SpeedRFP form on PHGmeetings.com, Dolce.com, DestinationMeetings.com, Hospes.com, GrandMeetingsMexico.com, as well as on over 140 individual hotel websites. You can find a complete list of every chain and individual hotel that is “SpeedRFP enabled” at http://www.speedrfp.com/users/landing/startrfp/.

For those of you who are already using SpeedRFP, please keep the feedback coming! We couldn’t have made it this far without you, and it is your feedback that is going to make SpeedRFP an even better time-saving tool for you and your industry peers.

We have some great news for all of our SpeedRFP integration chain and independent hotel partners, as well as our 4,200+ (and growing) meeting planner members. Starting today, you’ll see some fantastic enhancements to the SpeedRFP system as we have released version 1.0. Here is a peak at the new features released today, and other great features coming in May.

April Enhancements

External Response System – This new feature allows a hotel to indicate they received a piece of group business. This feature allows a hotel to indicate that they’ve responded to an RFP and how no matter whether it was within SpeedRFP or outside the system. They can even self-award themselves business. And once confirmed by the meeting planner, any other hotels that were included in this RFP will be notified that the business is no longer up for grabs.

(click to view larger)

Create Event within SpeedRFP – Many meeting planners told us they would like to create or input their RFP information directly on SpeedRFP.com first, then go searching for “SpeedRFP enabled” hotels to send it to. You asked, and we delivered! This new feature is available now, so feel free to check it out!

(click to view larger)

Reporting, reporting, reporting! – This was a feature requested by many of our Pro and Enterprise hotel customers. They needed the ability to look to see which hotel  sales team member a lead is/was assigned to, what business has been booked, what RFP’s still are awaiting a proposal, and what proposals are still awaiting a response from the meeting planner. This feature is great for chains too, as they’ll be able to get a high level view of each of their member hotels and their respective RFP activity.

Combined Events and RFPs Tab – At the request of SpeedRFP’s meeting planner members, this is a huge improvement that allows for more intuitive organization of Events and RFPs all on one screen. When you log in, you’ll notice a much more user friendly Events/RFPs tab.

(click to view larger)

Updated View RFP Page – This feature makes it very easy for the hotel sales team to see the most important information as soon as they arrive at the “View RFP” p age. It is very organized, and information is easy to find.

(click to view larger)

Printable Version of RFP – This has been a huge request from hotels recently, so as of today you’ll be able to print your RFPs in a format that makes sense.

May Enhancements

Complete Global Sales Office integration – This is a huge feature and will create great workflow efficiencies for planners and hotels sales teams. Now, every SpeedRFP enabled website will provide you with the ability to “cc” your GSO/NSO on your RFPs. This also means that your GSO/NSO can fill out and submit a SpeedRFP on a client’s behalf, and responses will be sent directly to the client with a carbon copy going to the GSO or NSO. Also, GSOs and NSOs can now send a proposal on behalf of the hotel to ensure timely proposal response.

Updated View Proposal Page – This is more organized and intuitive way to view proposals received from SpeedRFP enabled hotels.

Printable Version of Proposal - Allows planners to easily print proposals.

We hope you are as excited as we are about these great new SpeedRFP features. Please keep the feedback coming, as we are committed to building new features if they will allow you to save time in the RFP and site selection process. Have a new feature request? Send them to us at info@elitemeetings.com, and we’ll put them in the queue.

Today marks a big day in Elite Meetings’ history – SpeedRFP is a year old!

A little over a year ago, the concept of SpeedRFP was just an idea that was put into the planning and engineering stages on the back-end of the company. In fact, when it first started, it was a top-secret project referred to only by codename (I’m not kidding). The logo and concept were first unveiled to the public at The Motivation Show in 2009 and that was where we could finally let our excitement out.

On April 1, 2010, SpeedRFP launched to the meeting planning community. In just a year’s time, SpeedRFP has made some major strides, thanks to the committed effort of our entire team and the feedback from our users. SpeedRFP is now APEX compliant, integrates with MeetingBroker and Delphi, and can even handle wedding RFPs. These are just a few of the accomplishments. If you have time, give me a call and I’ll brag all about it like a proud parent – might even take some pictures of SpeedRFP out of my wallet if you’re lucky.

As with everything we do, it is completely free to meeting professionals. We’re just out to save you time.

We’re proud to say SpeedRFP is not only on 1,900+ hotels of EliteMeetings.com but on all the websites below!  That’s just one event you have to fill out and you can send the RFP to any of these hotels and resorts.  How easy is that?!?

And the list keeps growing daily! To view a continually updated list of SpeedRFP enabled hotels, visit: http://www.speedrfp.com/users/landing/startrfp/

So here’s to many more years of SpeedRFP! I sure hope they’ll be cake…

It was only a matter of time I guess that someone at a hotel figured out that they could use SpeedRFP to consolidate their wedding RFPs (Requests for Proposal) as well as their meeting RFPs.

Now we’re seeing it happen on multiple hotel web sites. The most notable example so far can be seen on Paradise Point’s website. The San Diego resort has created a second SpeedRFP form just for their weddings page and customized the button to read “Request a Proposal for Your Wedding”.

Of course, they could have used the same RFP form they are using for their meetings page but creating a different form just for weddings has allowed them to direct all of their incoming wedding RFPs to their Weddings team rather than their Meetings team.

Since creating a new RFP form can be done within only a few minutes and posted in just a few more, there’s no reason not to create as many forms as you need.

What would you do with another SpeedRFP form?

Deep within the SpeedRFP labs, we’ve been very busy behind the scenes with a few major enhancements. The biggest of which has been the completion of an integration with a few products from Newmarket International. Soon hotel’s utilizing MeetingBroker, Delphi, Delphi.net, and Daylight will be able to have all of their SpeedRFPs delivered to their preferred system.

So what exactly does this mean to you?

(click to enlarge)

Well, for you hoteliers, it means you won’t need to visit SpeedRFP.com to receive and view SpeedRFPs. We hate rekeying information just as much as you do. So we’ve built a channel for SpeedRFP that should eliminate rekeying the lead into your sales systems. We also wanted you to have access to the Newmarket set of tools that you’re used to and that are a part of your regular business processes. Any proposals you send are immediately sent to your customers just as they were before.

Here’s the coolest part, not only are SpeedRFPs from your own website delivered into MeetingBroker, Delphi, Delphi.net, or Daylight, but EVERY SPEEDRFP YOU RECEIVE from any website such as EliteMeetings.com or your CVB website will be funneled directly to your sales system. And since you can put a SpeedRFP button practically everywhere, you could probably say goodbye to rekeying forever!

And for you meeting & event planners, this integration should further expedite response times from the hotels that receive your requests for proposals. Because we’re removing some of the barriers for hoteliers to respond, we expect this new integration to be a benefit to you as well.

We’ve just testing with a few early adopters and then we’ll be opening the feature to the entire SpeedRFP community. Huge thanks to our friends at Newmarket for all of their help in our integration. You can read the original press release issued by Newmarket International

Cheers,
/Brad

As the SpeedRFP community continues to grow, we’re hearing more and more feedback. We couldn’t be happier about that.

One of the most recent inquiries was in regards to button styles. While we make efforts to brand the usual “Request Proposal” button, we understand that it doesn’t fit the style of every website out there.

A New Button: “Send a SpeedRFP”

Now by inserting one line of code into your widget, you can pick a different button. (HINT: This will only work with the “Overlay” version of the form. There is no button with the embedded form)

Just put this line into your code:
options.button = “b”;

It should go right before:
var srfp_widget = new srfp.widget(options);

Customize Your Button: Let Your Creativity Soar

And of course, sometimes, you don’t want to use a standard button at all. For the more creative, we offer up some new tools that will allow you to show a stylized SpeedRFP form button or text link.

One word before you start customizing…One of the key features of SpeedRFP for planners is that it allows them to send a SpeedRFP on a website in only a matter of seconds by providing access to their personal cloud of RFPs. The SpeedRFP form is constantly being enhanced to help make submission easier and friendlier. If no one can tell you accept SpeedRFP then you’ll probably discourage a lot of traffic that you would have otherwise received from the SpeedRFP community. Too much customization may hide your SpeedRFP button instead of letting it shine. Okay, enough said. Let’s make this button your own.

Here’s a quick video about customizing the button.

The button for the overlay form can be customized indefinitely. Let’s take a look at some examples:

(from DestinationMeetings.com)

(from Dolce.com and any Dolce Hotel & Resort website)

For this quick tutorial, let’s recreate Dolce’s customization above. (If any of the below looks like Greek to you, just send your developer a link to this page. They should be able to figure it out.) To customize the text of the button, use the following JavaScript code right before “var srfp_widget = new srfp.widget(options);” in the SpeedRFP widget:

This tells the form to use the custom button option.

options.button = "custom"; 

What do you want your button to say?

options.button_text = "Submit a Meeting RFP"; 

The style of the text in button can be customized.

options.button_text_style = "text-decoration:underline; text-transform:uppercase; color: red; padding: 2px;";

Specify the size of the SpeedRFP icon used in the custom button (24px is the default).

options.button_icon_size = "24";

All of this can be placed in your SpeedRFP form widget. The style for the text can also be applied to a specific <DIV> tag and then the SpeedRFP form widget can live within that <DIV> further down on the page.

Have any questions about the above? Use the comments area below to ask.

So your interest is piqued and you’ve heard a bit about SpeedRFP® from colleagues or meeting professionals. Perhaps you’ve received a few SpeedRFPs and you’re ready to really harness the power of our technology on your own website but you’re not quite sure how to get started. Below, we’ve quickly answered some of the most common questions from hoteliers..

Is SpeedRFP Right For You?

We understand, you don’t want to rush into changes to your website. So let’s figure out if SpeedRFP is right for you.

Do you work at a hotel that has space for events or meetings? Or at a Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB)? Or do you plan and run events for other companies?

If your answer to any of the above is “Yes”, then the odds are good that your team receives Requests For Proposals (RFPs) from meeting and event planners that visit your website. SpeedRFP is a good fit for your website and any other website you use to advertise for group business.

With SpeedRFP:

• Planners have a free system that allows them to travel the wild outback of the Internet with their RFPs in tow. RFPs for draft or existing events can be dropped off on your hotel’s website in seconds, which saves time and needless rekeying of info.
• Hoteliers, CVBs, hotel directory websites, and 3rd party planning companies can create a SpeedRFP portal on a website with a few lines of generated HTML code. These portals can even directly feed into a lead management system like MeetingBroker™ or Delphi™.
• Planners and hoteliers can directly converse through the SpeedRFP messaging system.

What Will SpeedRFP Do For You?

Within a few minutes, you can create a SpeedRFP web form for your website which will encourage meeting planners to send their event details to you easily and quickly. In short, SpeedRFP:

• Provides an APEX-enabled, intelligent RFP form for visitors to your website.
• Gives you a portal to manage incoming RFPs and outgoing responses.
• Puts you in touch directly with the meeting planner.
• Receives RFPs from SpeedRFP community members seconds after landing on your own website.
• Saves time spent rekeying information from RFPs.

How Can SpeedRFP Do All That?

Well, as our Texan CEO would say, “This ain’t our first rodeo!” We’ve had one of the most intuitive meetings-focused RFP submission systems in existence since 2006. We’ve compiled years of user feedback and research from both planners and hoteliers to build a system that provides benefits to each.

Our engineering team explained the details once to our marketing team. The conversation included fancy whiteboard diagrams and some cool new words like “iframe,” “widgetized,” and our favorite, “auto-magical.”  (Although we’re pretty sure that last one’s not a real word). Here’s how we explain it…

1. A form widget (a few lines of HTML code) is placed on your website which loads a SpeedRFP form in a user’s browser when they click a “Request Proposal” button or when they visit your meetings webpage.
2. A planner is logged into the form if they have a SpeedRFP ID and their contact information is loaded into the form so they don’t have to retype it.
3. They can clone any RFP from the SpeedRFP cloud directly into your web form and then click “Submit.”

If you’re the geek in your office, feel free to let us know and we can explain the finer points to you.

How Much Does SpeedRFP Cost?

While SpeedRFP is always free to send RFPs, you have a few options for how you want to receive them. We have a Community version which is free for you to use to receive and respond to SpeedRFPs. It gives you a form for one facility like a hotel, planning company, sales team, etc. to receive RFPs. You also have a dashboard that lets you assign incoming RFPs and respond directly to the customer with proposals and conversations.

There’s a Professional version that provides reports on your incoming RFPs and outgoing responses so you can keep track of your group leads more effectively. It also has a place for you to store your own literature like e-brochures, floor plans, fact sheets, and anything else you’d like to attach to your RFP responses. (Launching Q4, 2010)

If your sales team utilizes a lead management system such as MeetingBroker, Delphi, Delphi.net, or Daylight by Newmarket International, you can subscribe to ProPlus+ which delivers any SpeedRFPs your hotel receives directly into your sales system. (Launching Q4, 2010)

Perhaps you have a collection of hotels on one website and you want to allow visitors to send one RFP to multiple properties. You’ll want a SpeedRFP Superform which allows for more than one hotel per web form. This is the perfect fit for hotel chains, CVBs, and hotel directories.

What Happens To The RFP Data?

That’s a very good question. First, RFPs are only accessible by specific recipients. These recipients have been chosen by you or the creator of your SpeedRFP web form. RFPs cannot be forwarded via email. They must be shared using our “Share RFP” tool. This allows SpeedRFP to know who’s looking at what RFPs and keep RFP information secure. We never share your RFP information with other hotels.

We’ve mapped out a formal privacy policy that outlines how, when, where, and why we collect data on SpeedRFP.com pages and web forms. We encourage you to read it. Here’s the gist:

We never sell, share, or otherwise make user information available to anyone outside of Elite Meetings and SpeedRFP. You can share your information via our web forms, website pages, and conversations if you so desire. Using our sites constitutes an agreement to share your information with us.

We utilize website tracking tools, such as Google Analytics and CrazyEgg, to help us learn how visitors use our website so we can make it better. We also monitor traffic to determine load on our servers and watch for illegal or immoral activity on our sites that we feel may be malicious in nature.

In subscribing to our services, we may collect credit card and billing information. Credit card numbers are not stored on SpeedRFP servers. We utilize secure payment gateways and SSL encryption to accept financial information.

We use RFP and response information in a few different ways:

• We aggregate this data and report on status, submission, event, conversation, and response information to provide statistics on user dashboards and reports. For example, we’ll show a user a summary of their RFPs and what their current status is.
• We aggregate the same information and use it to provide trend analysis to various groups within our company and to SpeedRFP community members.
• We also use RFP and response information to notice trends in usage and/or non-usage in specific areas to help streamline and improve the user experience on our sites.
• We use information submitted on our site and web forms to help troubleshoot issues and provide technical support when you contact us.

We feel very strongly that information submitted to us should be kept in the strictest confidence so we encourage you to contact us if you have further questions regarding information security.

Okay, I’m Ready. How Do I Get Started?

We’re so glad you asked. The first thing you’ll want to do is create your SpeedRFP ID. It’s fast, free, and easy. You may even have an account already! If you’ve ever signed up on EliteMeetings.com or on FaceTimeScheduler.com, then your same credentials will work on SpeedRFP.com. (Don’t fret if you’ve forgotten your password. We’ll send you a new one right away.)Once you’ve signed in, the latest wizardry will guide you through the website.

Have a minute? You can watch a quick video on how to start receiving SpeedRFPs from your website.

Have More Questions? Contact Us!

If there’s one thing we love around here, it’s talking to customers! If you have additional questions that were not answered above, feel free to contact us at info@SpeedRFP.com or 805-730-1000. And if you happen to be in our neck of the woods (Santa Barbara, California, USA), don’t hesitate to drop in and see us.

We’re pretty sure that many of you already know what Elite Meetings does but here’s a little video created by our Marketing goddess, Amanda Smith, that should help clear up any confusion!

Cheers Amanda!

For more than 10 years, the Convention Industry Council (CIC) has been encouraging adoption of standard terminology, forms, and other elements of the business process for meeting, event, and incentive travel through its Accepted Practices Exchange (APEX).  The Accepted Practices are voluntary standards designed by the meetings, conventions and exhibitions industry with the goal of streamlining business processes and creating efficiencies.

Did you know that by simply using a SpeedRFP form, you are automatically complying with APEX standards?  It’s true! How can you become APEX compliant?

For meeting professionals, it’s as simple as filling out the SpeedRFP form on any website that has integrated SpeedRFP (see list below) and submitting your RFP. We’ve built the form to comply with the APEX recommended standard format, so by simply using it, you are automatically complying with APEX standards. Other benefits for meeting professionals using SpeedRFP are:

• It’s totally free
• You can submit RFPs to any SpeedRFP enabled hotel
• You’ll find the exact same familiar form on every SpeedRFP enabled hotel site
• You don’t have to re-key RFP data from one website to the next, it’s all saved for you and portable using your SpeedRFP account
• You can attach your own RFP document
• Best of all, you can manage all RFPs in one place (regardless of what website you used)
• You can export all responses to a consolidated response grid

For hotels, it’s as simple as uploading the SpeedRFP form to your own website. It just takes a few minutes to create your form, and as soon as it’s on your website, your hotel’s online RFP form is APEX compliant.  Let me say that one more time, as soon as SpeedRFP is on your website, you are complying with APEX standards! And, so is every meeting professional that uses your online RFP form.  Additional benefits for hotels include:

• Seamless integration into your website
• Can replace OR work alongside your existing RFP form
• No commissions
• The Community Edition is free
• Direct integration with MeetingBroker, Daylight, Delphi, Delphi.net (ProPLUS Edition)
• Higher-quality RFPs
• Access to the SpeedRFP community of meeting professionals

I’m biased, but I think this is absolutely amazing that simply by existing, SpeedRFP is creating an APEX compliant world…one RFP at a time.  We’ve taken what was once considered an impossible task, and created a huge solution for the entire industry. We are doing what most said couldn’t be done…we’re getting everyone on the same page.  What is the result?

• Efficiencies that will save thousands of hours on data entry
• Standardized data formats create consistent and thorough information
• Streamlined information transfer
• Data integrity
• Less work, higher accuracy

Where can you find SpeedRFP? Well, it’s obviously on EliteMeetings.com, but you can also find it on a growing number of hotel chain, guide, and independent hotel websites. Here is a quick look at the current list of chains and hotels (and hyperlinks) that have integrated the SpeedRFP form on to their website:

• Destination Hotels & Resorts
• Dolce Hotels & Resorts
• EliteMeetings.com
• American Airlines Training & Conference Center
• Aspen Meadows Resort
• AT&T Executive Conference Center
• Aura Cozumel Wyndham Grand Bay
• Ayres Hotel, Hawthorne
• Basking Ridge
• Bolger Center
• The BroAdmoor
• The Carneros
• Casa de Campo
• Dolce Atlanta-Peachtree
• Dolce Bad Nauheim
• Dolce Chantilly
• Dolce Frégate Provence
• Dolce Hayes Mansion Hotel
• Dolce La Hulpe Brussels
• Dolce Munich Unterschleissheim
• Dolce Norwalk
• Dolce Palisades
• Dolce Sitges
• Dolce Valley Forge
• Doubletree Hotel Boston/Bedford Glen
• Fantasy Springs Resort Casino
• Gran Melia Golf Resort Puerto Rico
• The H Hotel
• IBM Learning Center
• Innisbrook Golf Resort
• Ivey Spencer Leadership Centre
• Ivey ING Direct Leadership Centre
• Kona Village Resort
• Lakeway Resort And Spa
• Oak Ridge
• Palms Hotel
• Rancho de los Caballeros
• Sandestin
• Seaview
• Silverado Resort
• Wynn/Encore
  

There are many more chains, hotels, directory sites, CVB’s and others that will be integrating the SpeedRFP form soon, and we will keep you posted. To keep up with the latest SpeedRFP websites, we are keeping track here.

We are working as fast as we can to spread the word, but we could sure use your help! So, next time you land on a hotel website that does not have a SpeedRFP form, please let them know they can become APEX compliant simply by integrating the SpeedRFP form on their website.  We can standardize the industry, but as we’ve been learning, we must do it one person at a time. Thank you for your help!

Did you attend MPI’s World Education Congress in Vancouver? If you did, your days were likely packed with great presentations by industry speakers, fabulous meet and greets in the exhibit area, and just an all-around sense that the meetings industry is back on track again. Vancouver is one of my favorite places, and they played an excellent host of the event. I’m certain Vancouver made quite an impression on everyone, and their beautiful city will see an influx of business as a direct result of hosting WEC.

Personally, I spent my days at the exhibit hall giving web tutorials of Elite Meetings’ products – EliteMeetings.com, SpeedRFP, and FaceTime Appointment Scheduler – making new friends, and reconnecting with many familiar faces. This was MPI’s last exhibiting tradeshow, but they sure went out with a bang. I can honestly say that the exhibit days were 2 of the best I’ve ever spent at any show. We were so busy, I did not even have an opportunity to walk the floor to visit the other booths until the last 10 minutes of the exhibit hours on Monday.

This trip also reinforced the value of Twitter. There was non-stop chatter on the hashtag #WEC10, and I can personally vouch that Twitter contributed to a significant amount of the booth traffic from those who saw our tweets. If you were at the show, we hope you followed your way to the green balloons to learn more about SpeedRFP, our universal RFP system that powers EliteMeetings.com and many other sites. We are very proud of this new tool and are even more excited that it is being adopted so quickly by planners and hoteliers alike.  For meeting professionals, it’s a fast, free and easy tool to reduce the amount of re-keying that comes with a typical RFP. It also allows you to track all the responses in one spot, and even gives you the ability to message back and forth with the hotel.

For hoteliers, we are very excited that the MeetingBroker integration will soon be complete, and that so many chains, consortiums and independent hotels have chosen to add SpeedRFP to their websites. Downloading the SpeedRFP form creates instantaneous compliance by APEX, and planners become APEX compliant simply by filling it out. The result puts everyone on the same page, and makes the RFP process much easier. Check out the latest APEX compliant hotels that have added the SpeedRFP form on their websites here.

For those of you who participated in the hosted buyer program, you got to see firsthand the new enhancements to Elite Meetings’ own FaceTime Appointment Scheduler. Among these additions, we added the ability to export your appointments, so now your schedule can live on your laptop, desktop, or mobile device’s calendar. If you want to learn all about the new enhancements, read more here.

Lastly, I’d like to give a special thanks to the team from Maui Jim. They joined us in the booth, and we gave away Maui Jim Sunglasses to meeting professionals who took time to view a short web tour of Elite Meetings and SpeedRFP. Their team is always so great to work with, and their participation in our booth created quite the buzz. From the second the show doors opened until 11:30 on the 2nd day of the show, we had lines of attending planners waiting to take a web tour so they could pick up their new shades. If you didn’t have a chance to stop by our booth or go to the show, we’d still love to give you a web tutorial. To sign up for a personal tutorial, click here.

Cheers to the MPI team for putting on such a great show. This was the highest quality group of meeting professionals I have come across at these shows. Although I am sad to see this tradeshow go, I am excited about MPI’s partnership with IMEX America, which is certain to be an outstanding event.

Ever since the release of SpeedRFP into the wild, we’ve been on the lookout for websites that have created a home for SpeedRFP forms. A form is pretty easy to create and immediately “APEX-enables” the hotel that posts it.

While we’re not working hard to improve SpeedRFP based on user feedback, we’re busy tracking SpeedRFP to find all of the hotel and hotel chain websites where it may be hiding to make it easy for you to submit RFPs for your events.

First thing you ought to know is there are a few different species of SpeedRFP out there. Some websites like Destination Hotels & Resorts and EliteMeetings.com have chosen to dedicate a web page to SpeedRFP. Other websites have chosen to have SpeedRFP float above their site in an overlay. And we’ve recently discovered a new species on Dolce Hotels & Resorts websites. It’s recognized by it’s bright green “S” icon. Don’t be frightened, it’s the same SpeedRFP you know and love.

Have you run across SpeedRFP in your travels through the wild Internet? Please use the comment area below to post a URL when you run into a SpeedRFP form whilst you’re out and about on your Internet expeditions.

Do you know of a hotel that needs a better RFP system than they have right now? Feel free to let us know and we’ll happily reach out to them to share SpeedRFP.

Hotel Chains / Directories

• EliteMeetings.com
• Destination Hotels & Resorts
• Dolce Hotels & Resorts

Individual Hotels

• American Airlines Training & Conference Center
• Aspen Meadows Resort
• AT&T Executive Conference Center
• Aura Cozumel Wyndham Grand Bay
• Ayres Hotel, Hawthorne
• Basking Ridge
• Bolger Center
• The BroAdmoor
• The Carneros
• Casa de Campo
• Charleston Harbor Resort & Marina
• Dolce Atlanta-Peachtree
• Dolce Bad Nauheim
• Dolce Chantilly
• Dolce Frégate Provence
• Dolce Hayes Mansion Hotel
• Dolce La Hulpe Brussels
• Dolce Munich Unterschleissheim
• Dolce Norwalk
• Dolce Palisades
• Dolce Sitges
• Dolce Valley Forge
• Doubletree Hotel Boston/Bedford Glen
• Fantasy Springs Resort Casino
• Gran Melia Golf Resort Puerto Rico
• The H Hotel
• Hotel Sorella CITYCENTRE
• Hotel Valencia Riverwalk
• Hotel Valencia Santa Row
• IBM Learning Center
• Innisbrook Golf Resort
• Ivey Spencer Leadership Centre
• Ivey ING Direct Leadership Centre
• Kona Village Resort
• ME by Meliā — Cancun
• Oak Ridge
• Palms Hotel
• Pan Pacific Hotel – Seattle
  
• Rancho de los Caballeros
• Resort at Lake Las Vegas
  
• Sandestin
• Seaview
• Silverado Resort
• Talking Stick Resort
  
• Terranea Resort
• Thunder Valley Resort & Casino
  
• Wynn Las Vegas | Encore
  

Have you seen SpeedRFP in the wild?

Just recently we released an update to SpeedRFP.com. While there were lots of changes, some of the more notable ones are described below. Please remember, many of these changes are based on feedback that we get from our user community. Please don’t hesitate to use the “Feedback” tab on the right side of SpeedRFP.com to give us your ideas. We’ll probably incorporate them into future updates.

Everyone

1. Attachments are more obvious when viewing RFPs and Proposals. The section is denoted with a paper clip andthere’s a file icon next to each attachment.
   

   Attachments to RFPs & Proposals are more obvious

2. We’ve added SSL encryption to Sign-in and Edit Account. There now, don’t you feel better?
   

   Sign-in and Edit Account are Secured with SSL

3. Stay Signed-in for 90 days. Once you’ve signed in, you won’t have to sign in again for 90 days from that browser.
4. Add attachments to your messages.
   

   Add attachments to messages

   Perhaps you have an update to your event or to your proposal, just send a message and add your attachment directly to it.

5. Enhanced Alert Notifications.
   

   Notifications get a facelift to make them more readable

   Now success messages are green, error messages are yellow and info messages are blue. It makes things much easier to read and understand.

6. Internet Explorer 6 is now supported when using SpeedRFP Web Forms. I really must ask that you upgrade to IE7, IE8, Safari, or better yet, FireFox. Internet Explorer 6 first launched in August, 2001…9 years ago. I don’t even keep TVs that long.

Planners

1. You can provide a personalized note when you edit your RFP to a hotel to let the hotelier(s) know what changes you made and why you made them.
2. Control your contact information.
   

   Choose how to receive responses to RFPs and control your contact information

   When you uncheck any of the RFP contact methods in theResponse Preferences area of the RFP form, the information won’t show up for the hotels receiving your event details. For example, if you specify you want to be contacted via SpeedRFP and Email only, then your phone number and street address won’t be revealed to the hotels. This way you can be sure to control the way you receive contact from the hotels. If you’d like the hotels to contact you any time after you send your RFP, you can always 1) edit your RFP or 2) send your phone number or email address in a message to the Hotel(s).

3. You can now enter a personalized message when declining a proposal.
   

   You can provide a personalized note when declining a proposal

   This message will be sent directly to the hotel recipients via email.

4. When you re-open a canceled RFP, a personalized message can be sent to the hotelier(s) on the RFP. (Very similar to the dialog above)
5. You may duplicate a function in the Function Space area of the RFP.
   

   You can Duplicate Function Setups to save yourself time when creating your agenda

   Let’s say you have 8 breakout sessions happening in different rooms from 10-11am. Just create one of these breakouts as a function and then duplicate it to create the 5 breakouts you need without having to rekey the same function over again. You can even edit these duplicated functions so if you wanted 8 more from 11-12, you could duplicate your 10-11am session then edit it to be 11-12, then duplicate the new function a few more times to now have 10 breakouts. In this case, you’d only have to enter one full function because you were able to duplicate and edit the others to save on re-keying. Above is what I was able to do in a little under a minute

6. Copy room needs from the row above.
   

   Use the "Copy" button to copy room needs from the previous day

   If you have a 4 day event, enter your room needs on the first row and then use the “copy” button at the right of day 2 to copy the values from Day 1 down to Day 2.

Hoteliers

1. Overlay the SpeedRFP form instead of embedding it.
   

   Overlay the SpeedRFP Web Form on your website - no design changes needed

   There are now two options for deploying your SpeedRFP Web Form on your hotel website: Embed it or Overlay it. Overlaying the web form doesn’t require any changes to your design to accommodate the form. Once the widget is placed on the page, it creates a “Request Proposal” button that will open a SpeedRFP form over your site; Super easy and super clean. See it deployed here: http://www.casadecampo.com.do/?p=groups (Insider’s tip: There’s even a way to create a custom link on your site that opens the overlay form. Ask us for more info in Comments below.)

2. Proposals can now be edited.
   

   You can send a personal note once you've edited your proposal

   If you’ve submitted a proposal to a planner but want to make changes, you may now edit the proposal. You’ll be able to enter a personalized message that will be sent to the planner when you’re done saving your changes.

3. Proposed Dates/Rates are retained if the RFP is edited by the planner after you’ve submitted a proposal
4. You are no longer required to fill in every field when entering a reference. Plus you can remove a previously entered reference with a single click.

Miscellaneous Small Issue Fixes

Success message upon password request

RFP Web Forms will auto-reload if they load as blank.

Lots of other small items

The team here at Elite Meetings has spent the past year and a half building SpeedRFP, and now it’s here, ready to use!  To make it the best it can be, we surveyed our community of meeting professionals for their challenges, spoke with industry experts to determine standards, and tested the program mercilessly to ensure SpeedRFP was intuitive and easy to use.

What emerged is a tool that has been quickly accepted by our community of meeting professionals and rapidly adopted by hotels and resorts of all sizes.

Here are four reasons why you should consider adding SpeedRFP to your hotel’s site today:

SpeedRFP instantly provides websites with an APEX compliant form and enables easy exchange of RFPs and proposals between buyers and suppliers.

Your site gains immediate exposure to SpeedRFP members so you can receive more RFPs. SpeedRFP members simply need to log on and submit pre-loaded RFPs without rekeying.

It integrates seamlessly into a hotel’s website to either replace or work alongside your current online RFP form.  And, it’s commission-free.

SpeedRFP’s messaging system creates communication flow. You can communicate directly with the client and store all messages with the associated RFP.

Still not sure if it’s right for your hotel? Contact me to set up a one-on-one tour of SpeedRFP.

All the best,

Therese

Kelly Foy and Brad Pirman are in Las Vegas today at a very exciting event, making a very exciting announcement. Did I get your attention yet??

Newmarket International, Inc. (www.newmarketinc.com), the leader in sales and catering software solutions for the hospitality industry, and Elite Meetings International, a leading provider of integrated solutions that enhance the performance of meeting and hospitality professionals, announced the integration of their market-leading technologies at the NewmarketPLUS 2010 User Conference today in Las Vegas.

That’s right! We’re teaming up to make sure SpeedRFP is in even more locations for meeting planners and easier than ever for our hotel partners to use.

The partnership will enable direct connectivity between buyers and suppliers in the fast-growing online groups and meetings market.  MeetingBroker, an innovative online lead management and distribution solution, will integrate directly with SpeedRFP (www.SpeedRFP.com).

“We are delighted to make today’s announcement and welcome Elite Meetings’ SpeedRFP technology into Newmarket’s comprehensive suite of integrated lead management, distribution, and sales automation solutions,” said Marty Denning, Director of Marketing and Business Development for Newmarket International, Inc. He concluded, “The addition of SpeedRFP on our platform is another way we are working to make our online hospitality solutions as broad and efficient as possible for our customers, partners, and the entire industry.”

“We are excited to partner with Newmarket International to open up the connection between SpeedRFP and MeetingBroker, providing a huge value to the thousands of hotels using the MeetingBroker platform,” said Foy. He concluded, “The integration of our systems could not be more natural and easy. We are confident that SpeedRFP, already gaining widespread adoption, will be even more widely utilized as a result of this partnership.”

If you want a more comprehensive breakdown of the announcement, check out the official press release here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/Newmarket/Elite_Meetings/prweb3971914.htm

Well, SpeedRFP has been out for about two weeks and we’re getting lots of useful feedback from you. We’re hearing about some great possible features and some absolute must-haves. Our development team typically works in month-long cycles but we’ve integrated a couple of key features for you that we know were sorely missed at launch. As always, please let us know what you think of these features and if you have ideas for new features. Afterall, you’re driving SpeedRFP…we’re just your pit crew.

Recent Enhancements

This week saw the launch of version 0.4.1B and 0.4.2B and here are the enhancements we’ve added in these versions:

1) Event Status Report (Planners):

We realize that sometimes you want to view or share your received proposals offline. Perhaps you want to use some of the data in a report or perhaps you need to show due diligence when you’re sourcing for your events. Maybe you need to hand off your event proposals with someone so they can further your efforts. This feature existed on EliteMeetings and was used by many of our planners. But it wasn’t included in the initial launch of SpeedRFP. Here’s how to use it:

Click on "Status Report" to export an Excel-formatted report

1. Log in to SpeedRFP and click on your “Events” tab at the top
2. Click on the Event for which you’d like the status report
3. Click on “Status Report” next to the event name
4. Save the file to your computer and open the report in Microsoft Excel or compatible application.

The event status report will even show you average room rates per hotel and room type across multiple dates. Let us know if there are items you’d like to see in this report that aren’t there right now.

2) Share an RFP (Hoteliers):

To better incorporate SpeedRFP into your workflow, we’ve built “Share RFP” which allows a hotelier to share a received RFP with a colleague. At many hotels, RFPs are reviewed and directed to the appropriate sales person for follow-up. Now this is easy to do with SpeedRFPs:

You can share SpeedRFPs with your hotel teammates

1. View the incoming RFP (You can click the link in the New RFP email, the RFP link in your dashboard notifications, or the RFP name on your RFPs tab)
2. Click the “Share RFP” button at the top of the RFP
3. Enter the First Name, Last Name, and Email Address of the teammate you want to share with
4. Choose “View & Respond” or “View Only” to set permissions for your teammate
5. Click the “Share” button

Your teammate will immediately receive an email from SpeedRFP to let them know they have received a new SpeedRFP with a link directly to it. They’ll also have a new notification on their dashboard to alert them to it the next time they sign in to SpeedRFP.com. Be sure to let us know what you think and how this new feature works for you. Just use the “Feedback” tab on the right of the SpeedRFP.com website.

Upcoming Additions

We also have a fair amount of features we’re working on right now for release in mid-May. Some of the biggies are:

• Creating better Action Alerts (This is the little message below the nav bar that says “You’ve successfully…”)
• “Keep me Signed In” for at least 30 days unless you log out
• Tidying up the RFP form a bit and make it more intuitive
• Editing proposals and updating planners
• “Form in a Flopup” (one of my favorites!) More on this later.

Do you have features or changes you’d like to see? Then leave it in comments below, call us, email us, send a singing telegram…just tell us!

SpeedRFP Accepted Here:

• Elite Meetings (EliteMeetings.com)
• Destination Hotels & Resorts (DestinationMeetings.com)
• Ayers Hotels (AyersHotels.com)

Do you know of a site accepting SpeedRFPs? Please let us know so we can share the news!

Cheers,
/Brad

I’m like a proud, yet mad, scientist (picture Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein) who’s spent months in the laboratory with a team creating what will hopefully save people countless hours of wasted time.

SpeedRFP.com was conceived about 15 months ago and it’s now public for you to use. The concept was born from our truest intentions to provide a wonderful user experience that would save time and increase communication between meeting professionals and hoteliers when exchanging requests for proposals (RFPs). And we feel that’s exactly what we’ve been able to build.

Now, this isn’t your ordinary RFP system. We asked our meeting planner friends what they needed to save time and we designed SpeedRFP accordingly:

• SpeedRFP goes with you when you travel the Web. Arrive at a SpeedRFP page on any website and you can copy any information from a previous RFP. Never again rekey your event details.
• We’ve built a messaging application inside of SpeedRFP that allows you to communicate more efficiently. Leave a message in a conversation and it will be attached to the RFP so you can always find it.
• Your RFPs are organized underneath the event you’re planning so you can quickly and easily view all of the RFPs for your “Sales Training Conference” without looking in multiple places.
• SpeedRFP is standardized so not matter where you find an SpeedRFP form, you’ll be familiar with it already.
• You can store and access all of your RFPs in one spot. You won’t need to sift through mountains of email messages to find what you’re looking for.
• Have your RFPs in text documents word-processing files? Just upload them to the SpeedRFP form and hit “Submit RFP”
• SpeedRFP utilizes the APEX (Accepted Practices Exchange) approved setup for a single-facility RFP so the form fields aren’t foreign to experienced meeting professionals.

Our Hotelier friends had a lot of suggestions as well and we made sure to build it for them too:

• Any hotel can create their own SpeedRFP web form and post it on their web site in around 5 minutes! No more contracting a firm to build your RFP experience.
• The messaging system in SpeedRFP is perfect for asking questions about an event so you can keep your relationship intact and quickly ask questions when you have them.
• If you don’t have a Sales System or Customer Relationship Manager in place, SpeedRFP can be that for you. You’ll be able to easily see the status of incoming RFPs so you can quickly respond.
• Already use a sales and catering system for leads? We’re working with some of the biggest names out there to integrate SpeedRFP directly into your existing workflow.
• Attach media, brochures, photos, and more to your outgoing proposals so you can effectively convey your value story.

Right away, it will be utilized by EliteMeetings.com, Destination Hotels & Resorts’ DestinationMeetings.com, and AmexMeetingPlanner.com. But you can expect to see announcements in the coming weeks and months of new sites that are accepting SpeedRFPs.

We’re not done listening either. We need your feedback to help build a better system for you. We truly believe that technology should be designed and used to enhance and grow our relationships. So use the “Feedback” tab on the right of the site to ask questions, leave ideas, report problems, and let us know how we’re doing.

Thanks and we look forward to hearing from you. Now…Go Check It Out and stop wasting time!

Cheers!
/Brad

@BradPirman

(By the way, Only one engineer was harmed in the making of SpeedRFP and it was because she didn’t wear a helmet while snowboarding…shame!)

It’s Friday night, I’m more than halfway through a bottle of Zinfandel, music’s playing, and I’m chipping away at the few remaining open issues for the beta version of SpeedRFP. Our entire team is excited to see SpeedRFP hit the racetrack and perhaps no one more than me.

Years ago, a friend of mine imparted a morsel of wisdom, “We can make more money, we can buy more things, but we can never reclaim time spent.” I took that to heart and this theme drives everything we build at Elite Meetings. Forget about the old wasteful, inefficient ways of doing things. We think it’s time to reinvent the process of communication between hoteliers and planners. SpeedRFP will make this communication easier and far more efficient than ever before and in just a few days, we’ll invite the public to use this revolutionary, new platform.

Did I mention it is completely free for meeting planners? Well, nearly…We only ask that you let us know what you think. You see, we’ve built SpeedRFP to answer the needs that we heard time and time again from our friends in hospitality and meetings. And we’ll continue to need your valuable feedback to make what we’ve built even better so it will continue save you those precious minutes of the day. And hoteliers, will have the beta version for free as well through September 1, 2010.

Thanks for all of the feedback that you’ve given us so far. We’ve had some fantastic conversations with many of you over the last 15 months and we hope to have many, many more about how to answer your needs.

Cheers!
/Brad