Score Hotel Proposals on 100 Points (Template + Interactive Tool)

Most hotel proposal comparisons collapse under their own weight. Three proposals come in, the planner builds a quick spreadsheet, the CFO asks one question, the spreadsheet falls apart. By the time the fourth proposal arrives the comparison is already three different versions in three different inboxes. The decision gets made on the last conversation, not on the math.

The fix is boring and structural: pick seven categories, weight them to 100 before the bids come in, score each proposal 0-10 against a fixed rubric, multiply, sum. This piece walks through the seven categories, the 0-10 rubric for each, the TOPSIS normalization step for 4+ proposals, and how to present the result to a CFO who has not sat in any of the calls. The free Excel template at the bottom has everything wired. For the city-specific playbook, see the MUST/NICE/SKIP vendor framework.

How do you compare hotel proposals? (50-word answer)

On the same 100-point scoring scale, with weights agreed upfront. Price typically gets 25 percent of the total weight, location and meeting space 15 each, F&B, reliability and sustainability 10 each, contract risk 15. Score each proposal 0-10 per category against a fixed rubric, multiply by the weight, sum to 100. Highest weighted total wins.

The seven categories — and why these seven

Most published hotel scorecards use either too few categories (price, location, "other") or too many (12-15 sub-dimensions that nobody scores honestly). Seven sits at the point where each category captures a distinct buying concern and a planner can still score a proposal in 12-15 minutes.

1. Price (25 points). All-in cost per attendee including rooms, F&B, meeting space, AV, service charge, taxes. Not just the headline ADR. A proposal that lists a 220 EUR ADR with a 22 percent service charge plus 10 percent city tax is a 290 EUR proposal.
2. Location (15 points). Distance to airport / station, walkability to evening venues, the practical truth of "downtown" claims. The hotel that lists "10 minutes to the centre" but is actually a 25-minute taxi at peak hours scores low.
3. F&B (10 points). Breakfast inclusion, dietary range, plated-versus-buffet flexibility, F&B minimum reasonableness. See F&B minimum explained for the underlying mechanic.
4. Meeting space (15 points). Room dimensions and capacity at the agreed setup, daylight, ceiling height, breakout availability, AV included versus add-on. Square metres is necessary but not sufficient; column placement and natural light matter.
5. Contract risk (15 points). Attrition percentage, cancellation curve, force majeure wording, deposit terms. Defaults to the four carve-outs from the attrition primer; a clean contract scores 10, the standard template scores 6, anything with payment-in-full-on-signing scores 2.
6. Reliability (10 points). Response time on the RFP itself, completeness of the bid (did they answer all your questions?), responsiveness when you asked a follow-up. A hotel that answers in 48 hours with a full deck scores 10; a hotel that takes 11 days and skips three questions scores 3.
7. Sustainability (10 points). ISO 20121, carbon reporting, plastics policy, food-waste tracking, energy disclosure, accessibility certification. Scored on six concrete sub-criteria (see the rubric below); makes sustainability defensible rather than tokenistic.

Total: 100. Adjust the individual weights if your brief demands it (procurement-led often pushes Price to 30, experience-led drops Price to 15 and moves the 10 to Meeting Space). What you cannot do is change the weights once the proposals have arrived.

The 0-10 rubric for each category

The rubric is what makes the scorecard repeatable. Without it, two scorers will give wildly different totals for the same proposal. The anchors below are tight enough that two trained planners land within one point of each other on most categories.

Price (anchored on all-in cost per attendee)

• 10 — In the bottom 20% of all proposals received on per-attendee cost
• 7 — Below the median per-attendee cost
• 5 — Around the median
• 3 — Above the median but within 15%
• 0 — More than 15% above median, or proposal incomplete

Location (anchored on practical access)

• 10 — Under 20 min from primary airport/station, walkable to dining
• 7 — 20-35 min to transit, walkable to some dining
• 5 — 35-50 min OR walkable but not transit-friendly
• 3 — Over 50 min OR requires shuttles for evening events
• 0 — Substantially inconvenient or rural without dedicated transport

F&B (anchored on flexibility and disclosure)

• 10 — Breakfast included, full dietary range, plated/buffet options, F&B minimum at or below 30% of room spend
• 7 — Three of the four conditions met
• 5 — Two of the four
• 3 — One of the four
• 0 — F&B minimum above 80% of room spend, or no menu provided

Meeting space (anchored on usable square metres and natural light)

• 10 — Sized 30%+ above the brief, natural light, column-free, dedicated breakouts, AV included
• 7 — Sized to brief with daylight; AV included; one or two breakouts
• 5 — Sized to brief; AV separate quote; daylight unclear
• 3 — Tight to brief; basement or windowless; AV add-on
• 0 — Below brief size or unsuitable for the agreed setup

Contract risk (anchored on the standard template)

• 10 — Carve-outs already in draft (sister-property, rebookable-rate, force-majeure stacking, pickup-not-block)
• 7 — Two carve-outs already in draft
• 5 — Standard template; signals openness to red-line
• 3 — Standard template; resistant to red-line OR aggressive attrition (90%+)
• 0 — Pay-in-full on signing, or non-negotiable cancellation curve

Reliability (anchored on RFP responsiveness)

• 10 — Full response within 48 hours, answers every question, single contact
• 7 — 3-5 days, completeness 90%+
• 5 — 5-7 days, completeness 75-90%
• 3 — 7-10 days, incomplete
• 0 — 10+ days, multiple chases, incomplete bid

Sustainability (anchored on six concrete sub-criteria)

Score each sub-criterion 0/1/2 (no/partial/full), sum to 12, then map to 0-10: ISO 20121 certification, carbon-per-attendee reporting, single-use plastic ban, food-waste tracking, energy mix disclosure, accessibility certification. A score of 12 maps to 10 points; 9 maps to 7; 6 maps to 5; 3 maps to 3; 0 maps to 0. Standards reference the ISO 20121 sustainable events management standard.

TOPSIS — why the weighted-sum is not always enough

For two or three proposals, the weighted sum is sufficient. For four or more, two proposals can produce nearly identical totals through very different category profiles — one strong on price and weak on contract risk, the other strong on contract risk and weak on price. Both score 72 out of 100, but they are not the same bid.

TOPSIS handles this. It expresses how close each proposal sits to the ideal-best (a hypothetical hotel that scored 10 on every category) and the ideal-worst (a hypothetical hotel that scored 0 on every category) via geometric distance. The output is a single closeness coefficient between 0 and 1; a higher number means closer to ideal. Two proposals with identical weighted sums but different profiles will produce different TOPSIS coefficients, with the more-balanced proposal scoring higher.

The math is straightforward but the Excel template ships with it pre-wired so you do not have to implement it yourself. If you want the source, the original method paper is Hwang and Yoon (1981), Multiple Attribute Decision Making.

Presenting to the CFO — three artifacts, in order

The CFO has not been on any of the site visits. The presentation needs to land in five minutes. Three artifacts, in this order:

1. The rubric (one page). Categories, weights, what 0-5-10 mean. Confirms the methodology was agreed upfront.
2. The scorecard (one page). Seven columns, four rows (one per hotel), weighted totals in the right margin. Visual: the winning hotel is in the top row, highlighted.
3. The TOPSIS ranking (single column). Closeness coefficients sorted descending. Confirms the weighted-sum ranking is robust to profile differences.

If the CFO challenges a score, you point to the rubric and the comments column. If the CFO challenges the weights, you point to the email where the weights were agreed before the RFP went out. The whole conversation takes seven minutes including questions.

The three mistakes that ruin a hotel scorecard

(1) Changing weights after the proposals arrive. The single most common failure. A planner sees that Hotel B wins on the original weighting and the CMO does not like the choice, so the weights get tweaked until Hotel A wins. The fix: lock the weights in an email to the stakeholder before the RFP goes out.

(2) Scoring "vibes" rather than evidence. "I liked the GM" is not a 9 on Reliability. The rubric exists to prevent this. If a category score is not backed by a comment that references the actual proposal text, score it conservatively.

(3) Letting one category dominate by accident. A 30-weight on Price plus a 5-weight on everything else means Price is the only category that matters. Check the weights. If any one category is more than 30 of the 100, you are running a single-criterion comparison with extra steps. See the RFP checklist for upstream brief design that prevents this.

When the 100-point scorecard is overkill

For one or two proposals, the scorecard is overkill. A simple side-by-side comparison of price, location, and the two questions you care most about will suffice. The scorecard's value compounds with the number of proposals; below three, the math is overhead. Above three, the math starts saving real time and surfaces real differences.

For sole-source decisions (one hotel pre-selected by leadership), the scorecard still has a role: it documents why the chosen hotel scores well across the categories, which is useful for procurement audit even when the comparison is theoretical.

Defensibility benchmarks — what a good scorecard looks like

From the rounds we have observed at Easy RFP, robust scorecards meet four tests: (1) the weights were agreed before any proposal arrived; (2) the rubric is documented and was the same for every proposal; (3) two scorers per proposal produced totals within five points of each other; (4) the comments column references specific lines of the proposal that drove each score. Scorecards that fail any of those four tests get challenged by procurement, and the challenges usually succeed.

Internal benchmark on scoring time: a trained planner scores five proposals in 90 minutes, including review of the rubric. A first-time scorer takes 2 hours. Above eight proposals, scoring fatigue sets in and consistency drops; if you have more than eight bids, run an initial cut on price alone (top six advance), then score the six.

Adjacent decisions the scorecard makes harder — and easier

Easier: the BAFO conversation. With a documented scorecard, you can go back to the top two with a defensible reason for asking for a best-and-final-offer ("you scored 14.5 on price; the leader scored 16.5 — can you close the gap?"). The BAFO guide covers the negotiation script in detail.

Harder: the politically-motivated choice. If senior leadership wants Hotel C and the scorecard says Hotel A, you have a documented gap to bridge — which is uncomfortable but also useful, because it forces the conversation about why C is preferred to be explicit rather than hidden in the choice.

When the scorecard fails — and what to do

The scorecard fails when one of the inputs is itself wrong. If the price column is using ADR rather than all-in cost per attendee, the rankings will skew toward cheap-sounding hotels with expensive add-ons. If the contract-risk column is being scored by someone who has not red-lined a hotel contract before, the carve-out rubric will not be applied accurately.

The fix is upstream: have the price column computed by procurement (or by the F&B-aware planner), have the contract-risk column scored by someone with redline experience, and review the rubric before each scoring round. The math is the easy part; the inputs are where the work is.