RFP for Travel Management Services: A Complete Guide

An RFP (Request for Proposal) is a document that a company sends out to potential travel management companies (TMCs) to seek proposals for managing their corporate travel needs. The document outlines the company's travel requirements and what they expect from TMC.

Some companies also include questions related to specific corporate travel management areas and request examples of TMC capabilities. This way, they uncover how each vendor can address those gaps.

You must note that RFP for travel management services does not need to be excessively long to be effective. By focusing on the critical areas of improvement in your travel program, you can ask concise yet valuable questions. Ultimately, the purpose of RFP is to make your decision-making process more structured and efficient.

The travel management RFP template

Copy this structure straight into your RFP document. Nine sections, in this order, covering what vendors need from you and what you need from them.

The most common failure is not a missing section. It is writing the whole thing alone. 

A director of global strategic sourcing at an enterprise logistics organisation told us their previous RFP had been run "in a vacuum with no insight or no discussions or participation from key stakeholders", and rebuilt the next one around stakeholder input before issuing it.) 

Travel, finance, IT and at least one frequent traveler should see the draft before it goes out. If you want to see how a published RFP for travel management services reads end to end, Innovations for Poverty Action has one online in full. For the formal structure behind competitive procurement generally, the US Federal Acquisition Regulation sets out how negotiated solicitations are meant to work, and the concept itself is summarised at.

The vendor question bank

Ask these, grouped by category. Thirty to forty questions is plenty. Anything longer and vendors start pasting boilerplate, which defeats the comparison. The first four categories are the ones buyers most often leave out and then discover at contract stage.

Pricing is the category most often asked badly. Request it in a fixed format, broken into per-trip fee, offline or agent-assisted fee, implementation cost and any minimum, so responses land in a comparable shape. 

A sourcing coordinator at an industrial manufacturing firm running roughly $155,000 a month in travel told us their own bid comparison put one platform's annual net fee tens of thousands of dollars below the three others they priced, a gap that only became visible once every vendor had quoted on the same basis.

The RFP timeline

Eight to twelve weeks is realistic for a mid-market travel program. Compressing the response window is what produces the vague answers people complain about afterwards.

What Should be Included in a Corporate Travel RFP?

You must provide details of your travel program so that the vendors can understand its current state and future goals.

1. Details to Provide to the Vendor

Some important details to provide to the vendor in RFP for travel management services are:

• ‍Company Background: Provide company background such as office locations, number of employees that travel per month, travel budget, whether you need domestic or international travel services, etc.‍
• Travel Program Overview: Provide a brief overview of the services you are seeking. Explain elements of your travel program, what is working for you, and what additional services you can benefit from.‍
• Scope of Work: Clearly define the scope of the corporate travel services required. This may include details on booking flights, travel policy adherence, reporting, and any other relevant services.‍
• Timeline: Provide a detailed timeline for the project, including key deadlines. This helps vendors understand the project’s duration and plan their resources accordingly.‍
• Constraints: Include any limitations that vendors should be aware of, such as software that your company already uses and want the travel software to integrate with.

2. Details to Seek From the Vendor

Some important details to seek from the vendor in RFP for travel management services:

• ‍Company Background: Request information about the vendor’s company, including their history, experience, and expertise in providing the specific products or services you need.‍
• Relevant Experience: Inquire about the vendor’s experience in delivering similar projects or services to other clients. Ask for case studies or references to validate their track record.‍
• Methodology: Ask the vendor to outline their approach to delivering the project or services. Understand how they plan to execute and achieve the desired outcomes.‍
• Pricing: Seek a transparent breakdown of costs and pricing for the project or services. Ensure there are no hidden fees in the RFP for travel management services.‍
• Client References: Ask for references from current or past clients who have worked with the vendor. Contact these references to gain insights into the vendor’s performance and customer satisfaction.‍
• Technical Capabilities: For technology-related projects, seek information about the vendor’s infrastructure and compatibility with your existing systems.‍
• Travel Support: Inquire about the vendor’s post-implementation support, including response times and support hours.

What to probe hardest in your travel management RFP

Four areas separate vendors more than any others, so weight your questions and your scoring toward them rather than spreading effort evenly. Scoring the responses once they arrive is a separate job, covered in the RFP evaluation guide and checklist.

Do They Provide Robust Travel Support?

The company should offer round-the-clock travel support to assist your employees during unforeseen situations. They should be available over various modes, such as calls, chats, and email.

Moreover, corporate travel often involves crossing time zones, and issues may arise at any hour of the day. Having 24/7 travel support is particularly beneficial when employees are traveling to international destinations, as the TMC can assist them regardless of the time zone differences.

You must also consider looking for a TMC that has low response and resolution time. This ensures that your employees get support as quickly as possible.

Do they Offer Advanced Tech Solutions?

Look for a TMC that provides user-friendly online booking tools such as business travel management software (TMS). An advanced TMS enables your employees to easily search, compare, and book flights and stays, leading to time and cost savings.

The TMS should include features such as live traveler tracking, automatic policy compliance, and data analytics. It is even better if the TMS can be accessed as a mobile app. This allows travelers to manage their itineraries on the go, receive real-time updates, and access travel information offline.

Additionally, check whether the software they provide is compatible with the software that your company already uses, e.g., accounting software. This ensures that the two can integrate seamlessly for data transfer.

Do they Provide Value for their Pricing?

When you get the RFP for travel management services, assess the range and quality of services provided by the TMC in relation to their pricing. A valuable TMC should offer a comprehensive suite of services that align with your organization’s travel needs, such as booking assistance, traveler support, policy compliance, reporting, and analytics.

Further, ensure that the charges of certain requirements aren’t high, for instance, travel support beyond business hours or customized reports. Look for TMCs that charge you on a per-trip basis instead of a subscription fee if you are just starting out.

You can seek feedback from TMC’s current or past clients to gauge their satisfaction with the pricing of the services provided. Positive testimonials can validate the value the TMC brings to its clients.

Are they Fulfilling the Gaps in your Travel Program?

Look for a TMC that can assist you in areas where your travel program needs improvement. Some needs could be:

• Cost Optimization: Choose a TMC that can identify opportunities for cost savings in your travel program. This could include securing negotiated rates with suppliers.
• Policy Compliance: A good TMC will implement measures to enforce policy guidelines and prevent policy violations.
• Data Analysis and Reporting: Look for a TMC that offers robust data analysis and reporting capabilities. They should provide actionable insights into your travel program’s performance.
• Global Capabilities: If your organization requires international travel services, seek a TMC with global capabilities and an extensive network of partners.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Consider whether the TMC can adapt to your organization’s changing needs and growth.

What vendors actually get asked: notes from ITILITE's RFP responses

Five themes come up in almost every enterprise travel RFP ITILITE responds to, and four of them sit outside the booking-and-pricing questions most buyers start with. They are worth knowing whether or not ITILITE ends up on your list.

Scope is more modular than buyers assume -

An RFP does not have to replace travel and expenses together. One global food company scoped its RFP strictly to replace the travel booking platform and kept Concur for expense, which widened the vendor field considerably: platforms that could not have won an all-in-one bid were suddenly competitive. Ask vendors directly whether they will bid on travel alone.

Financial viability is a gate, not a formality -

Procurement teams signing two to four year agreements increasingly require evidence that a vendor is cash-flow positive before shortlisting. Expect to request, and vendors to supply, verifiable financial stability documentation through legal and finance rather than a line in the proposal. Put it in the RFP rather than raising it at contract stage, when it becomes a delay.

The legal and security addendums are where timelines slip -

Enterprise RFPs routinely require a redlined Master Services Agreement, a Data Processing Agreement, a data deletion and non-reuse addendum covering terminated users, and proof of SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR and PCI compliance. Asking for these in the RFP tells you early which vendors have them ready and which will need three weeks and outside counsel.

Duty of care questions have moved from policy to product -

RFPs now commonly mandate real-time travel safety alerting rather than an annual policy statement. ITILITE answers this with live traveler mapping and integration with third-party risk platforms such as Crisis24, and the useful question to ask any vendor is whether risk data is native, integrated, or absent.

Pricing is tested as scenarios, not a number -

Serious RFPs ask vendors to price the same volume several ways so the models can be compared rather than the headline. ITILITE is typically asked to quote across four: flat usage-based fees per trip, a discounted prepaid wallet rate, a zero-fee option contingent on adopting the corporate card, and volume cashback rebates above a monthly spend threshold. Multi-year commitments are then compared against a one-year agreement to see what the discount is actually buying.

Ask every vendor to quote across the models that apply to you, on the same volume, in the same table. It is the single change that makes pricing responses comparable.

Before you issue the RFP

Three checks are worth doing on the draft, and each one catches a problem that is expensive to fix after responses arrive.

Have the people who will live with the decision read it. Travel, finance, IT and a frequent traveler each spot different gaps, and an RFP written by procurement alone tends to get relitigated internally once a winner is picked.

Write the scoring model before you issue. Publishing your criteria and weights in section 8 is not just courtesy to vendors. It forces the panel to agree what matters while nobody is looking at a demo.

Issuing to a dozen vendors creates a scoring workload nobody completes properly. Four to six is enough, and the top 10 corporate travel management companies and corporate travel management tools and software breakdowns are a reasonable starting point for building that list. If you are replacing a specific incumbent, the Concur alternatives comparison covers that switch. Larger programs should also read enterprise travel management before setting scope, and the policy your chosen vendor will enforce belongs in a written travel and expense policy. 

ITILITE responds to RFPs in this format regularly, and the questions above are the ones it answers most often: how policy applies at search rather than at review, whether existing negotiated rates load without an integration fee, and what the support model actually costs. Sending the question bank above to any vendor, ITILITE included, produces answers you can lay side by side.