Senior Project - HOT

The American Express Purchasing Management Group (PMG) sets up specialized hotel rate plans for their corporate customers in Europe. These corporate customers are generally large companies whose employees spend many nights in hotels in Europe over the course of a year. By concentrating their hotel stays in a smaller number of hotels, a company can negotiate a better rate, since they will be staying in any given hotel more frequently.

The goal of the project was to develop a software package that automates the Request for Proposal (RFP) process for hotel purchasing, a manual process that was very labor-intensive. Implemented in Java using an object-oriented approach, the software provides a database in which all bids for each corporate client are stored. A user interface is provided to manage the bids, allowing a user to determine which hotels should participate in the bid process for each particular corporate client, automatically distribute requests for bids via FAX or email to these hotels, monitor the status of all bids, analyze the bids that are returned, select the hotels that will best meet the client's needs, and then notify those hotels of the acceptance and tender contracts. While hotels may submit bids via FAX, a web-based interface is provided for each hotel to enter its facility description and submit its bid via the internet.