Sending the RFP, comparing bids, and contracting the venue

A venue RFP sends one request to several venues at once, collects their proposals into one comparison, and tracks the award back on the event record.

Sourcing runs as one round from Onomi 360, and the bids return into the comparison here. Where an offer is negotiated further or a bid is accepted, that work happens in the connected sourcing partner's system. The award and its status are pulled back onto the event record close to real time.

This guide covers completing and sending the RFP, comparing bids, recording the award and contracting the winner, and withdrawing a booking after an award. The search and the shortlist the RFP goes to are covered in Searching for venues and choosing how to book.

Sending the RFP and comparing bids

Multi-venue RFP management sits at the center of the flow. One request goes to several venues at once, and the responses come back as structured proposals into one comparison.

1. Open the request from the Sourcing module while it is in RFP draft status, and complete it. Confirm the dates and their flexibility, the attendee count, the meeting rooms and layouts you need, food and beverage requirements, bedrooms if any, and the budget. Venues respond to what the request says, so complete anything missing before you go to market.

   What you complete here is also what decides the award target. A request completed with the bedroom need and no meeting rooms is the rooms-only request, and it starts on the Accommodation award target. Any request carrying meeting space is the venue request, whether or not it also carries bedrooms. See Group accommodation and room blocks from sourcing.

   

2. Review the shortlist you built in search, and remove any venue you no longer want to invite.

   Tip: A focused shortlist outperforms a broad one. Sending the request to about four well-chosen venues typically gets faster and more competitive responses than going wide. Each venue knows it has a real chance of winning.

3. Select Send RFP. The sourcing status moves to RFP active, on the request and on the event record. Every shortlisted venue is invited to respond. Venues connected through direct hotel-chain APIs receive the request inside their own venue management systems, and return their pricing through the API with no re-keying on either side. The RFP carries your organization's terms embedded in it, and a venue acknowledges those terms when it submits its proposal. Every bid in the comparison was therefore made against terms the venue has already accepted.

   

   Note: A request with an empty shortlist cannot be sent. Sending it returns "Add at least one venue to the shortlist before sending this RFP." and leaves the request in RFP draft.

4. As venues respond, their proposals collect on the request and the sourcing status moves to Bids received. Each proposal arrives as structured data, not a PDF quote.

   A sent request stays open to the invited venues for 30 days. If that response window closes with nothing returned, the request shows "No bids were returned before the response window closed." and stays at RFP active.

   To go back to market, select Reopen RFP on the request. The request returns to RFP draft, carrying its shortlist, its requirements, and any bids already returned. You can then add or remove venues, and revise what you are asking for before going out again. Selecting Send RFP a second time opens a new 30-day response window from the day you send it. The venues still on the shortlist are invited again.

5. Open the bid comparison view. Venue rate comparison happens here. Proposals sit side by side on rates, availability, inclusions, total estimated costs, concessions, and key contractual terms, with the capacities and dates each proposal covers beside them. The trade-offs are therefore visible on one screen.

   Sort the comparison by rate or by capacity, depending on which matters most for this event. Filter it to the venues still in contention. Export the comparison for the stakeholders who review the choice outside the platform. Questions to a venue are asked and answered on its proposal, so a clarification and its answer sit with the bid they concern. The exchange stays on the request as the negotiation trail behind the award.

   

   Where the returned bids cluster above the event's budget, the negotiation continues in the connected sourcing partner's system rather than here. Open the request there with View in the sourcing system. Negotiate with the venues still in contention, and accept the bid you settle on in that system. The accepted amount and the award return to this request close to real time.

   The comparison keeps the bids as the venues returned them, and the event record carries what was finally agreed, so both are auditable. Take a leading bid of EUR 41,200 negotiated down to EUR 38,900. The comparison keeps EUR 41,200 and the award carries EUR 38,900.

   Where the market itself cannot meet the budget, take the request back to RFP draft with Reopen RFP, revise the shortlist or the requirements, and go out again.

6. Accept the winning proposal in the connected sourcing partner's system, opened from the request with View in the sourcing system. The acceptance is made there rather than in Onomi 360. The award returns to the request close to real time, carrying the venue, the accepted amount, and the date it was accepted.

   The two blocking venue rules are checked when that award reaches the event record. A venue that was shortlisted before the rule was switched on therefore meets the block at this point. An off-list venue in a market with Require listed venues switched on is refused with "This venue is not on the approved venue list for France. Select a listed venue.", and a venue of a restricted type is refused with "Venues of type casino and gaming are restricted for France. Select a venue of a permitted type."

   An approved venue list that flags rather than blocks does not stop the award. A refused award leaves the venue unbooked on the record. The way past it is another venue on the shortlist, or an organization administrator putting the venue on the market's approved venue list before the award returns again. See Setting venue rules in Onomi 360.

   Once the award is recorded, the sourcing status moves to RFP awarded. The winning venue's entry on the event record is marked as the event's booked venue. The entries of the venues that were compared and not chosen stay on the record as compared.

   Awarding also writes the budget. The awarded amount lands in the Committed column of the event budget, attributed to that award. It lands under the budget category whose Sourcing award target is set to Venue, or to Accommodation where the award is a rooms-only room-block request. The final invoice settles the Actual column through reconciliation.

   An award has one target category, so a request that carries both the meeting space and the bedroom need commits in full to Venue. See Group accommodation and room blocks from sourcing. Sourcing award target is a setting on each budget category in your organization's category hierarchy. It tells an award which category to write to, whatever your organization named that category. Nothing is re-keyed between sourcing and budget. See Setting up budgets: categories, bands, and policies, which documents the setting.

7. Verify the writeback. Open the event record and check that the chosen venue, the agreed rates, and the awarded costs now show on the record. The sourcing status should read RFP awarded, with the awarded amount in the budget's Committed column.

   The venue entries are read per event, on the event record, in its Venue section and its Sourcing module. Each entry carries its venue-rule result. No cross-event sourcing report or export carries them, so a portfolio-level check means opening the event records.

   The awarded amount is the exception. The award wrote it into the Committed column of the budget category carrying the Sourcing award target it needed. Cost lines on event records are what the Costs report, the costs entity of the report builder, and the reinvoicing summaries read. So the money reads across events even where the venue entry behind it does not.

Note: A sourcing request has no separate cancel or withdraw. A request that is never awarded stays at the status it has reached: RFP draft, RFP active, or Bids received. It stays there until it is awarded, or until the event itself is cancelled. Cancelling the event closes an active RFP toward the invited venues.

See Following sourcing across your events in How to source a venue from your event.

Check what a request carries before you send it, because sending is what fixes its award target (see Group accommodation and room blocks from sourcing). A request holds its award target from the moment it goes to market: the send on the RFP route, and the confirmation of the booking on the instant-booking route. It holds that target until the event is cancelled, or until Reopen RFP returns it to RFP draft. On a reopened request the derivation rule applies again, exactly as it does to a request that has never been sent. The target is re-fixed when the request is sent again.

An award settles the target on that request for the life of the event. That is why Reopen RFP does not return an awarded request. It is also why a replacement venue is agreed with the venue directly and recorded on the event record, rather than taken back to market.

A request sent on the wrong target is therefore recovered rather than stranded. Where a request carrying both the meeting space and the bedroom need went to market as the venue request, select Reopen RFP, remove the meeting space, and send it again as the accommodation request.

A reopened request holds no target while it sits in RFP draft. What still holds the ceiling of one request per award target there is the send-time refusal, "This event already holds a venue sourcing request. Remove the meeting space from this request to send it as an accommodation request, or work the existing venue request." It refuses any draft whose derived target is already held by another request on the event.

The Sourcing module is where anyone checks whether the venue is secured. An unawarded request left open therefore reads as sourcing still in progress. Two cases are worth handling deliberately.

• If you book the venue outside the sourcing flow, tell the invited venues that the RFP is not proceeding. Then record the venue and its cost directly on the event record, so the record carries the booking your team actually made. Searching for venues and choosing how to book names who records a venue in the Venue section of the event record, and what happens where a venue rule blocks the venue being recorded.
• If the meeting moves to another market, tell the venues invited under the old shortlist. Where the request has already been sent, take it back to RFP draft with Reopen RFP. Then search the new market, rebuild the shortlist, and send it again.

Contracting the awarded venue

Once the award is confirmed, the agreement with the venue is executed following your legal and signature process. The sourcing flow supports that process rather than replacing it. An electronic signature workflow is available in the flow where your process uses one. Where a venue or hotel group runs signature on its own platform, the agreement is executed there.

The event record carries the status, not the paper. The awarded venue's entry shows the contract as Executed, with the date and the surface it was executed on, for example "Executed April 3, 2026, on the venue group's signature platform". The entry states plainly that the status and date are recorded on the record, while the signed agreement stays on the signature platform. The record therefore answers whether the contract is executed, when, and where it lives. The agreement itself is retrieved from the platform it was signed on.

The agreement is assembled from the terms your organization has already negotiated with the venue or hotel group, carried into it by the sourcing flow. Those terms were embedded in the RFP and acknowledged by the venue at proposal submission. A booking therefore starts from the paper your legal team has already negotiated, rather than the venue's own template. See Where your organization's terms live in Setting venue rules in Onomi 360.

Contract management therefore ends where the event lives. The contract status, the award, and the final contracted costs read on the event record, alongside the rest of the event's financials. The award and the contract as the sourcing partner holds them are opened from the request with View in the sourcing system. That control is a secondary one beside the record rather than the main action, since the detail behind the status lives in that system.

Purchase requisitions and purchase orders stay in your procurement platform, exactly as your procurement policies require. Onomi carries the awarded costs on the event record so the event view and the procurement view agree.

Withdrawing a booking after an award

Sometimes the event goes ahead but the booking does not, for example after your compliance organization rules the venue out, or after the venue itself falls through. The withdrawal is then recorded on the event record rather than on the sourcing request. An awarded request has no cancel and no withdraw, and it is not reopened either. Reopen RFP returns only a sent request that has not been awarded, so the request stays at RFP awarded.

That is also what the Sourcing module keeps showing for the event. An event whose booking has been withdrawn therefore reads as having a venue until the record says otherwise. The steps below bring the record back in line with what your team has actually booked.

1. Cancel the booking with the venue under the terms of the award, and tell the venue directly, as the platform sends nothing on your behalf here.
2. Record the replacement venue in the Venue section of the event record. Select Add venue, then enter it as free text or pick it from the market's approved venue list. It arrives as a venue entry of its own and becomes the event's booked venue. The withdrawn venue's entry is marked withdrawn and stays on the record beside it.

   That write belongs to the planners of the event's workspace (Manager or Editor), and to holders of the finance role whose scope covers the event. On a record-only event that has no workspace, the finance role holds it alone. See Role-based access and visibility for internal and external stakeholders.

   Add venue is a block point like shortlisting and the award. In a market with Require listed venues switched on, recording an off-list replacement is refused with "This venue is not on the approved venue list for France. Select a listed venue." The replacement is then a venue on the market's approved list, or an organization administrator adds the venue to that list first. See Setting venue rules in Onomi 360.

3. Settle the cost line the award already wrote, then mark it reconciled. Awarding put the awarded amount in the Committed column of the target category. Withdrawing the booking leaves that line where it is, because the sourcing request stays at RFP awarded and nothing is reversed automatically.

   Enter what the withdrawal actually cost as the line's Actual amount: the cancellation fee, or zero where no fee is charged. The commitment is then settled rather than left open. Entering that amount is an ordinary cost-line edit. It belongs to holders of the finance role whose scope covers the event, and to the planners of the event's workspace. On a record-only event that has no workspace, the finance role holds it alone.

   Where your finance process would rather clear the line than settle it at zero, Remove cost line removes it. Those same two groups hold that control. A line a confirmed allocation has already read is reopened first.

   The amount on its own does not release the event. A line left open on the withdrawn booking holds the event open at the end, because an event cannot be closed while a cost line is unreconciled. Mark the line reconciled with Mark reconciled. That is the write the close waits on, and it belongs to the event's finance owner and to the other holders of the finance role whose scope covers the event. See Reconciliation, invoices, and closing the event for both paths and for Mark reconciled.

4. Record the replacement venue's cost on the event budget as a new cost line. The withdrawn award's line carries what the cancellation cost, and the replacement line carries what the new venue costs. The venue commitment is therefore not counted twice. See How to use the Budget module.

The withdrawn venue's entry stays on the record, marked withdrawn, with the venue-rule result it carried and the award it was made under. It sits beside the replacement's entry, which is now the event's booked venue. An auditor therefore reads what was booked, why it changed, and what the change cost.

A replacement is not taken back to market on the same event. The venue award target is already used by the awarded request. The replacement venue is agreed with the venue directly and recorded on the record, the same way a venue booked outside the sourcing flow is recorded.

* Onomi 360 MeetingsEQ exclusive capabilities.