Adjust each slider to match your team's situation. Defaults are based on European MICE industry benchmarks.
12 events
Include all events where you send RFPs to hotels: conferences, offsites, incentives, etc.
15 h
Research + emails + chasing + comparing proposals + negotiation + documentation. Industry average: 15 hours.
EUR 55
Include salary + employer social contributions + overhead. Mid-level event manager in Western Europe: EUR 40–65/h.
18%
Sending to 6–10 hotels simultaneously creates competitive pressure. Industry benchmark: 15–25% better pricing vs. single-hotel approach.
EUR 18,000
Total hotel spend per event: rooms + meeting space + F&B. European SME average: EUR 15,000–25,000.
EUR 45
Free plan €0 forever (1 RFP/mo). Pro €45/mo for 10 RFPs. Team €175/mo unlimited.
Hours lost to manual sourcing per year
180 hours
That is 4.5 full working weeks your team cannot spend on actual event delivery.
Cost of manual sourcing (time only)
EUR 9,900
Staff time cost at your fully-loaded hourly rate, per year.
Estimated savings from competitive bidding
EUR 38,880
Sending to multiple hotels creates competitive pricing. This is the estimated gain vs. single-hotel approach.
Total annual value of switching
EUR 48,240
Time savings + pricing savings minus subscription cost.
Payback period
0.4 months
Time until Easy RFP pays for itself in time savings alone (first event).
ROI multiple
89x
Annual value returned per euro invested in the subscription.
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How the calculator works
These calculations are based on three separate cost categories that planners rarely quantify together: staff time, suboptimal pricing, and opportunity cost.
Staff time cost is straightforward: multiply your annual event volume by hours spent per event by fully-loaded hourly cost. The "15 hours per event" default comes from multiple surveys of European MICE planners between 2023 and 2025, including analysis by ICCA, MPI, and independent consultancies. The range across planners is 8 hours (very simple, single-hotel negotiation) to 30+ hours (complex multi-city sourcing with multiple rounds).
Competitive bidding savings are the less intuitive but often larger category. When you source hotels through a structured, parallel process, hotels know they are being compared and price more competitively. The 15 to 25% range used here is consistent with findings from procurement research across event categories. The effect is strongest for events with 2+ nights of accommodation, where the room block represents a significant revenue opportunity for the hotel.
Opportunity cost is not included in this calculator because it is impossible to quantify generically. An event planner spending 15 fewer hours on sourcing per event could spend those hours on attendee experience, post-event reporting, relationship management, or sourcing an additional event that generates revenue. Most organisations would assign a value significantly higher than the time cost alone.
Metric
Manual sourcing
Easy RFP
Time per event
12–20 hours
25–45 minutes
Hotels contacted simultaneously
1–3 (sequentially)
6–10 (parallel)
Proposal comparability
Manual reformatting
Structured, comparable
Response chasing
Manual follow-up emails
Automated reminders
Competitive pricing round
Manual negotiation
BAFO round built in
Decision documentation
Manual (spreadsheets)
Automatic audit trail
Annual time cost (12 events)
EUR 9,000–20,000
EUR 540 (subscription)
Assumptions and limitations. This calculator assumes that fully-automated sourcing reduces per-event time from the benchmark 15 hours to approximately 30 minutes. In practice, complex events with unique requirements may take longer even with automation. The competitive savings estimate assumes the planner did not previously use competitive bidding; organisations already running parallel RFP processes may see lower incremental gains from switching to automation, though they will still benefit from the time savings.
Ready to run your first automated RFP?
Send your brief to multiple hotels in one click. Compare proposals side by side. Run a BAFO round for the best final offer.
No credit card. Free plan available — no credit card. Takes 5 minutes to send your first RFP.
Common questions
How accurate is this calculator?
The defaults are based on published industry benchmarks from ICCA, MPI, and independent MICE research covering European event planners. Your actual numbers may be higher or lower. We recommend adjusting all five sliders to match your team's reality rather than relying on the defaults. The time savings figure (from 15 hours to 30 minutes) is conservative and assumes you spend some time reviewing proposals, which is unavoidable regardless of automation.
Is the competitive bidding saving realistic?
The 15 to 25% range is consistently reported across procurement research in the events and MICE sector. The mechanism is straightforward: when a hotel knows it is competing against 6 to 10 other properties on identical criteria, it prices differently than when it believes it is the only option being considered. The effect is larger for room-block-heavy events and smaller for single-day meetings without accommodation. You can set this slider to 0 if you want to see only the time-saving component of the ROI.
Does Easy RFP work for small teams sourcing just 3–5 events per year?
Yes. Even at 3 events per year, the time savings at the default 15 hours per event cover the annual subscription cost many times over. The competitive bidding savings at EUR 15,000 per event average add significant additional value. Easy RFP's free plan means you can verify this with your first real event before any subscription commitment.
What does "fully-loaded hourly cost" mean?
Fully-loaded cost includes gross salary, employer social security contributions, pension contributions, benefits, and an allocation for shared overhead (office, software, management time). In Western Europe, this is typically 1.5 to 2x the gross monthly salary divided by working hours. A planner earning EUR 3,500 gross per month has a fully-loaded cost of roughly EUR 5,250 to 7,000 per month, or approximately EUR 32 to 43 per hour. We use EUR 55 as the default to represent mid-level planners in higher-cost markets like Germany, Netherlands, and Scandinavia.