Corporate Travel RFP: What to Include So You Can Actually Compare Vendor Responses

Three travel management company (TMC) proposals hit your inbox in incompatible formats. One arrives as a case-study deck, another buries the fee schedule on page 42, and a third quotes per-trip pricing while the others quote per-transaction. You have a corporate travel RFP process to run, and none of the bidders answered the same questions.

The RFP didn't force a shared structure, so the vendor with the best presentation beats the vendor with the best service model. This guide walks through the five controls that make a corporate travel RFP produce comparable responses. Get those right and you can pick the TMC that actually fits your program.

Share Your Travel Program Data Upfront in the Corporate Travel RFP

Vendors that receive no program data respond with templates, so the RFP has to open with your numbers. Include the program data elements that shape staffing and pricing:

• Total transactions for the past three years, grouped by assisted and unassisted, phone and online, and domestic versus cross-border
• Hotel- and car-only booking counts
• Projected first-year volume
• Percentage of online transactions that require human intervention, because a high touchless percentage reduces the vendor's staffing cost and should reduce your fees
• Air and hotel spend split, top routes by volume, and your current TMC if you have one
• The specific problems the winning vendor must solve

This level of traveler profile and program data detail keeps pricing tied to your actual routes and channel mix instead of vendor assumptions. If your bookings are fragmented, compare charge card data against any TMC or booking records you have; a gap between the two indicates leakage that the new vendor should be asked to capture.

Require a Standardized Vendor Response Format

When vendors respond in whatever format they choose, evaluation means translating a slide deck into the same units as a spreadsheet. Specify the required section order in the RFP so every bidder answers in the same sequence, such as company overview, service model, technology, pricing, and references. Because presentation-heavy responses can bury thin substance, set a maximum page count as well. Then include a fee disclosure table with line items you define.

Build the fee table yourself instead of using each vendor's pricing sheet as the comparison basis. Because the table becomes the shared unit of comparison, require exact figures in every cell for each of these line items:

• Online unassisted air, agent-assisted air, hotel, and car transactions
• Ticket exchanges and cancellations
• After-hours calls with and without ticketing
• Online booking tool (OBT) platform fees
• One-time implementation charges, including the human resources (HR) feed and single sign-on (SSO)

"Transaction fees vary by booking type" is not a number. The table should be specific enough to compare published agent transaction fees, for example, a full-service agent booking versus an unassisted online booking through the contracted tool.

Recent pricing developments make the buyer-specified table non-negotiable. Bidders increasingly submit per-trip fee offers, and a per-trip offer and a per-transaction offer cannot be compared unless every vendor also completes your table.

Ask for pricing under multiple transaction fee models with disclosure of TMC revenue streams beyond the per-booking rate, including global distribution system (GDS) incentives and unused ticket credit handling. Without that breakdown you cannot tell whether a low fee is competitive or subsidized by revenue you never see.

The Questions That Reveal Real TMC Service Levels

A vendor can answer yes to every generic capability question without telling you anything about how your account will be serviced. Use the prompts below to make each bidder describe how the work will actually happen.

Service Model Questions

Ask for the exact team structure that will service your account, and make vendors define "dedicated," "designated," and "shared," because each TMC defines those terms differently and the difference determines whether your agents serve only your travelers. Once the team model is clear, drill into staffing depth and accountability:

• How many accounts does the proposed account manager handle, and how much of their time is allotted to ours versus others?
• What are your call-overflow and backup procedures when the assigned agent is out?
• What service level agreements (SLAs) do you offer, with what financial incentives for hitting key performance indicators (KPIs) and what penalties for underperformance?
• How are SLAs measured quarterly against phone response time, ticket accuracy, and surveyed traveler satisfaction?

After the measurement rules are defined, request references from accounts of similar size in similar industries. Include recently implemented accounts and accounts recently lost for reasons other than consolidation. Flagship enterprise references say nothing about your service tier; ask for spend-band references instead.

Technology Questions

Three in five (59%) travel managers include technology as one of the most important factors when selecting a TMC, and two in five (42%) include technology as one of the top pain points of their primary TMC, per GBTA research, so this section deserves rigor. Start with actual client-level OBT performance at your spend level, then push for specifics on adoption math, agent routing, and policy controls:

• What is the actual OBT adoption rate at our spend level, and how do you define an "eligible" booking in that calculation?
• Which booking types route to agent assist? For example, do multi-city itineraries, group bookings, or New Distribution Capability (NDC) content gaps commonly force agent handoffs?
• Does the tool block, warn, or require a reason code before a traveler completes an out-of-policy selection, and how does reason code data surface in reporting?
• What does the implementation timeline look like, including the IT work and HR feed or SSO support the rollout will demand from our team?

Full OBT evaluation criteria deserve their own section of the RFP, but these questions expose the gap between marketed adoption and what your travelers will actually experience.

Disruption and Support Questions

Ask for rebooking turnaround data from major disruption events. Do not accept process descriptions as a substitute, because they do not show how the vendor performed under load. Once the disruption evidence is clear, pin down the mechanics of after-hours support:

• Does after-hours coverage use a dedicated team or a shared pool, and is any of it outsourced to a third party?
• Where do the after-hours call centers sit?
• Can after-hours agents access our traveler profiles and payment instruments?
• What is the per-call fee in writing for each call type, given that published university fee schedules show meaningfully higher fees for calls that involve ticket exchanges than for calls without ticketing?
• What triggers a handoff from automated rebooking to a human agent, how fast does it happen, and what do you guarantee when the automation fails?

That last piece matters most for programs with international travelers, where after-hours spreads add up fast across a year of exchanges and reissues.

Build a Scoring Matrix Before Responses Arrive

Set evaluation categories and weights before opening the first response, then publish the weighted criteria in the RFP itself. If weights are decided afterward, they drift toward whatever the most polished proposal emphasized, and evaluators unconsciously award extra points to vendors that overshare on topics they care about. Because bidders see the criteria upfront, they focus on what you will actually score.

• Service model fit at your spend level. Score the specific team proposed for your account. Small and midsize accounts at a mega-TMC should verify what services that TMC actually delivers to clients their size.
• Total cost of ownership. Client fees are only part of the picture. Supplier revenue has historically represented up to 60% or more of a TMC's EBITDA, so weight completeness of revenue disclosure alongside the quoted rates.
• OBT capability against your actual booking types. A tool that handles most of a simple domestic program may route a much larger share of a multi-segment international program to agents at agent prices. Score against your booking mix.
• Comparable client references. Score references based on similarity to your spend band, not brand-name recognition. Plan to call clients not on the list.
• Contract flexibility. Score notice periods, volume commitment terms, and data portability. Confirm in writing that your firm owns all traveler profiles and reservation records with export format specified; absent explicit contract language, passenger name record (PNR) ownership defaults to the ticketing entity.

Weighted this way, the matrix rewards vendors whose service model, cost structure, and contract terms actually fit your program, not whichever proposal reads the best.

Evaluate Responses: Shortlist, Pilot, Then Decide

Matrix scores get you to a shortlist, but the last mile of a corporate travel RFP is where paper claims meet production reality. Work the shortlist, run a pilot, and only then commit.

Shortlist

Narrow the field to two or three finalists based on matrix scores. After pricing is normalized, compare financial offers and staffing proposals on spreadsheets, visit the finalists' operations to meet the managers who would run your account, and work the reference calls. Include the off-list ones, because curated references rarely expose implementation friction. Do not award the business until every contract term is agreed.

Pilot

Validate the finalist claims before you sign by running a structured pilot with your actual travelers in production conditions. During that pilot, have finalists book real trips through their OBT so you can measure adoption and booking completion rate against proposal claims. Because support performance often diverges from booking-tool performance, compare support response time separately. If a vendor scores well on paper and poorly in a pilot, it has shown you the gap between its sales team and its service team.

Decide

The whole sequence works better when your managed-channel inputs are real. When travelers bypass the TMC workflow, the program loses visibility and agent-assisted volume rises, and the baseline inputs the next RFP needs get weaker. Award the business to the finalist whose pilot performance, contract terms, and total cost of ownership hold up together, not to the one that only wins on any single dimension.

Strengthen Your Managed-Channel Data Before the Next RFP

Once the RFP forces every bidder into the same structure, the next decision is whether your managed-channel data is strong enough to make that structure work. Cleaner adoption, compliance, and channel-mix data going in means fewer vendor assumptions and a sharper comparison coming out.

For Direct Travel customers, Otto the Agent adds an AI-powered booking assistant on top of the existing Direct Travel relationship, available through mobile apps, the web, and 24/7 phone support. Travelers can search and book flights, hotels, and car rentals conversationally, and stored preferences and payment methods, loyalty numbers, and policy indicators apply automatically. Travel managers get another way to move more bookings through the managed flow before the evaluation shifts to what another TMC claims the program needs. Otto is free to try for the first 12 months.

Start with Otto to improve managed-channel data before your next TMC RFP. Cleaner data makes the next vendor comparison harder for presentation-heavy proposals to distort.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is a corporate travel RFP?

A corporate travel RFP is a formal document a company issues to TMC vendors that describes its travel program (spend, volume, routes, policies, and pain points) and requests structured proposals covering service model, technology, pricing, implementation, and references. It differs from a request for information (RFI), a shorter information request used to build the bidder list before the full RFP goes out.

How many vendors should I include in a corporate travel RFP?

Invite three to five suppliers for the initial RFP, and require vendors to meet minimum criteria before receiving it so you aren't obligated to evaluate responses that don't fit your business. Then narrow to two or three finalists for presentations and best-and-final offers; a wider finalist field makes side-by-side evaluation unmanageable.

How long should a corporate travel RFP process take?

Most processes run roughly 8–16 weeks from issuance to selection, and simpler programs can finish faster. Give vendors at least 4 weeks to respond for a domestic program. Having program data ready upfront and requiring a standardized response format shortens evaluation more than compressing the response window does.

What's the most common mistake in a corporate travel RFP?

The most common mistake is issuing a question list before gathering reliable volume, route, and channel data. Uncustomized generic RFP templates and underestimated timelines are the next most common failures.

How do I make sure I have accurate program data before issuing an RFP?

If bookings are scattered across consumer sites and personal cards, reconcile charge card data against whatever booking records exist to establish a baseline and spot leakage. If you already use Direct Travel and low adoption or high agent call-in volume is weakening the data, Otto can help move more solo-traveler flight and hotel bookings into the managed channel before the RFP process begins. The result is cleaner adoption and compliance data going into your evaluation.