Writing a Marketing RFP for Your Lodge: A Template That Gets Useful Proposals
Most lodge owners who send out a marketing RFP get back a stack of proposals that cannot be compared. One agency quotes a website rebuild, another quotes social media management, a third sends a polished deck full of brand ideas, and each one is priced for a different idea of what the lodge needs. The owner ends up choosing on gut feel or on price, which is exactly what the RFP was supposed to prevent.
The problem is rarely the agencies. It is the document. A request that says "we want to grow bookings and improve our online presence" leaves every agency guessing at the goal, the budget, the booking setup, and how you will decide, and each fills those gaps with its own assumptions.
A short, specific RFP fixes that. This post gives you a marketing RFP template built for lodges, cabin rentals, and sporting properties: goals framed as outcomes, the channel and booking data an agency needs to price the work fairly, a budget range and timeline, exactly what each response must include, and a scoring rubric you set before the first proposal arrives. It is written as headed sections you can copy into a document and fill in tonight.
If you have already read our Outfitter Marketing Agency Hiring Guide, think of its 27 questions as the half of the RFP that agencies answer. This template is the half you write: the brief that sits in front of those questions and makes the answers comparable.
Why Short and Specific Beats Long and Vague
Agencies read an RFP twice. The first read is a screen: is this a business we can help, can the budget support the work, and do we have room to take it on? Altitude Marketing, writing from the agency side of the inbox in March 2024, describes exactly that triage, and notes that it may decline a request when the project sits outside its expertise or does not fit its budget requirements. A vague brief fails the screen in a quiet way. Agencies with full calendars and clear specialties may pass on it, and the ones that respond may be the ones willing to guess.
The second read is for scoping. Here an agency is trying to turn your words into a plan and a price. WebFX's guide to writing a marketing RFP, published in November 2024, makes the point that the more company background you share, including your audience, what you sell, your experience with past agencies, and your short- and long-term goals, the more accurately an agency can quote. Every blank you leave becomes an assumption, and assumptions are where proposals drift apart.
Length is not the same as specificity. A thirty-page RFP full of boilerplate and generic corporate questions is long and still vague. A four-page brief that states your occupancy pattern, booking engine, OTA share, budget range, and scoring method is short and specific, and it gets better proposals because it leaves agencies less to guess.
Be careful where you borrow a structure from. Search for a hospitality RFP template and some of what comes back is the wrong document. Marriott's meetings page describes an RFP as a group's request for a customized proposal covering guest rooms, event space, and catering, which runs the opposite direction from what you need. Lodging marketing RFPs online are often local government solicitations, such as Kitsap County's request for a designated marketing organization funded by lodging tax revenue, which promote a whole destination. Copy either and you will ask agencies for the wrong scope.
Screen First, Then Send the Full Brief
Before you write the full RFP, decide who will receive it. Large advertisers have long split agency searches into two steps. The ANA and the 4As, the national associations for advertisers and agencies, laid out client guidelines in October 2011 that put a request for information (RFI) at the initial-list stage and the request for proposal at the semi-finalist stage. Their standardized RFI template, published in July 2025, describes the RFI as a screening tool and warns that RFI requests have grown until they are conflated with the information asked for in an RFP, which burdens both sides.
A lodge does not need a formal RFI process, but the principle scales down well. Start with a short screen, a phone call or a one-page questionnaire, to confirm that the agency works with lodges or outdoor businesses, handles the channels you care about, fits your budget range, and can start when you need it to. Then send the full brief only to the few agencies still in the conversation. You will read fewer proposals, each one more considered, and you will not turn the search into a second job during the months you should be running the lodge.
Template Part One: Who You Are and What You Want to Achieve
The first section of the template tells an agency what kind of business it would be working for and what success looks like. TrinityP3's modular marketing agency RFP template, updated in March 2026, puts the same idea plainly: start with the business problem and the outcome you want, not a list of services. Lodges are especially prone to the services-first mistake because owners hear about tactics constantly. "We need SEO and Instagram" is a list of activities. "We need to fill weekday nights in March and April without discounting" is an outcome an agency can build a plan around.
Section 1: About the property
Property name, location, and the nearest towns or airports guests travel from
Years in operation and ownership structure (owner-operated, family, investor-backed, managed)
What you sell: lodging types and counts, guided programs, packages, meals, events, corporate groups
Seasons and peak periods for each program, and the months that are hardest to fill
Who your best guests are today: where they come from, how far ahead they book, and how many return
What makes the property different, in your own words, and what guests say in reviews
Past agency or freelancer relationships: what worked, what did not, and why they ended
Section 2: Goals framed as outcomes
Write three to five goals you can measure in your own booking records. Good lodge outcomes usually fall into a few families:
Filled dates: occupancy or booked nights in specific weeks or seasons, especially shoulder and off-season periods
Direct bookings: the share of reservations that come through your own website, phone, or email rather than an OTA or marketplace
Inquiry quality: the number of inquiries that turn into deposits, not just the number of form fills
Rebooking: how many guests return within a year or two
Specific programs: groups, corporate retreats, a new fishing program, a new cabin, or an event calendar
For each goal, include where you stand today if you know it, and say plainly if you do not. "We think roughly half our bookings come through OTAs but we have never checked" is useful information. It tells an agency that measurement setup belongs in the scope.
Section 3: Why you are hiring now
Two or three sentences on what triggered the search: a new property, a slow season, a website that cannot take bookings, or a previous agency relationship that ended. It tells an agency how urgent the work is and keeps it from proposing what you just walked away from.
Template Part Two: Your Channels, Booking Engine, and OTA Mix
This is the section most lodge RFPs skip and the one that matters most for fair pricing. An agency cannot scope work on a booking funnel it cannot see. Altitude's list of what a brief should answer includes the scope of work and any current marketing technology for exactly this reason: the stack determines what is possible, what needs fixing first, and how much effort the work will take. If you have not mapped your own setup recently, our guide to the outfitter marketing tech stack is a useful checklist.
Section 4: Current marketing channels
Website: platform (Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, custom, or a booking-platform site), who built it, who can edit it, and who owns the domain
Google Business Profile: whether you have one, who manages it, and roughly how many reviews you have
Email: the platform, list size, and how often you send
Social media: which accounts are active and who posts
Paid advertising: any Google Ads, Meta, or other spend, who runs it, and whether you can see the accounts
Content: blog, video, photography library, and how current it is
Section 5: Booking engine and how a booking actually happens
The reservation or booking system you use, and whether guests can book and pay online
What share of bookings arrive by phone, email, website form, online checkout, and walk-in or referral, even as rough estimates
How deposits work and when guests pay the balance
Whether you track where each booking came from, and how (a question on the phone, UTM tags, call tracking, the booking system's own reports)
Who answers inquiries and how quickly
If you have never connected phone bookings to marketing sources, say so. It is a common gap at lodges, and our post on call tracking for outfitters explains why it changes how every other number is read.
Section 6: OTA and marketplace mix
Which OTAs, vacation rental platforms, or outdoor booking marketplaces list the property
The approximate share of bookings each one produces, by season if it differs
Whether those guests are mostly first-time or repeat
Whether you want to reduce OTA reliance, hold it steady, or use it deliberately for new guests
Any contract terms with those platforms that affect what you can do on your own channels
OTA dependence can be a major variable in what a lodge needs from an agency. A property that gets most first-time guests from marketplaces needs a plan for turning them into direct repeat guests, a different job from one that books almost entirely by phone. Our piece on owning the client list again after the aggregator years covers why that shift matters.
Section 7: Data you can share
List what you can share with finalists under a simple confidentiality agreement and with the winning agency: booking reports by month and source, website analytics, ad accounts, email reports, and past marketing reports. You do not have to attach revenue figures to the RFP itself, but say what exists. An agency that knows clean booking data is available will propose different work from one that assumes it must build measurement from nothing.
Template Part Three: Budget Range and Timeline
Lodge owners hesitate most at the budget, usually worried that naming a number means agencies will spend all of it. Hiding it backfires. Levie Mir's marketing agency RFP guide says that without a range every agency guesses, and that some of the best agencies decline briefs that hide the budget. WebFX describes the budget as something that can make or break an agency's interest and recommends being honest about it to save time on both sides. Altitude's list ends with the same item: an accurate number or a range that has been approved or nearly approved.
Section 8: Budget
The annual or monthly range you can commit to agency fees
Any separate budget for ad spend, photography or video, or a website build, listed apart from fees
Whether the range is approved or still being decided
Payment terms you prefer, and whether you want a trial period or a defined first phase
A range works better than a single figure. If you are unsure where the value is, Levie Mir suggests asking agencies to show what they would do at two points within the range, which tells you what the extra money buys. If you have not set a marketing budget before, our marketing budget calculator for outfitters walks through how to think about it as a share of revenue.
Section 9: Timeline and decision dates
Altitude lists four dates every brief should give: when proposals are due, when you will decide, when work should start, and when it should be complete or reviewed. For a lodge, add the booking-season dates that matter, because they constrain everything else.
Date questions are due and the date you will answer them (send every answer to every agency)
Proposal deadline
Dates for finalist conversations or presentations
Decision date
Target start date
The booking windows the work must support, such as when your key season starts taking deposits
A review point, such as 90 days after start, when you will judge early progress
Be realistic: an agency hired the week before peak inquiries arrive will spend that season learning your business. Our post on the first 90 days with a new marketing agency shows what onboarding looks like so you can plan around it.
Template Part Four: What Every Response Must Include
Response requirements make proposals comparable. Let every agency choose its own format and you will spend your review translating between decks, so tell them what to include, in what order, and how long it can be.
Section 10: Required proposal contents
A short summary of how the agency understands your property, your guests, and your goals, in its own words
The plan: what it would do in the first 90 days and over the first year, tied to the outcomes in Section 2
What it would fix first in your current channels, booking setup, or OTA mix, and why
How it will measure progress, which numbers it will report, how often, and in what format
The named people who will do the day-to-day work, their roles, and how much of their time your account gets
Relevant experience with lodges, outfitters, or hospitality businesses, with references you can call
Pricing, broken out by fees, any pass-through costs, and anything billed separately
Contract terms: length, notice period, and what happens to your website, accounts, content, and data if you part ways
Assumptions and anything the agency needs from you to succeed
TrinityP3's template stresses asking for the people who will work on your account day to day, because the people who pitch are not always the people who do the work. For a lodge, you want to know who answers when you call mid-season.
Section 11: One real problem, not free creative
Instead of asking for sample ads, logos, or a speculative campaign, give agencies one real problem and ask how they would approach it. TrinityP3 makes the same recommendation: do not ask for unsolicited creative concepts, and ask instead how the agency would tackle a realistic strategic blocker and what assumption its approach depends on. A lodge version might read: "Our March and April weekdays run well below capacity. Describe how you would approach filling them in the first year, what you would need from us, and what would have to be true for your approach to work." The answers will tell you more about how an agency thinks than any mockup.
Section 12: The agency questions
Attach the questions every agency must answer in writing. Our 27-question RFP template covers industry fit, strategy, SEO and AI search, content, paid media and the booking funnel, reporting, and contract terms, and works well as this section. Trim it to the questions that matter for your goals.
Section 13: Format and rules
Maximum length for the written proposal
File format and where to send it
One named contact for questions, and a rule that all answers are shared with every respondent
What happens to proposals after the decision, and a note that you will not use one agency's ideas without hiring it
The Scoring Rubric: Decide Before You Read
The most useful thing you can add to a lodge RFP is a scoring rubric written before any proposal arrives. Without one, the most recent presentation, the slickest deck, or the lowest price tends to win by default. Levie Mir's guide recommends agreeing on evaluation weights before responses come in so the decision is fair and defensible. Federal procurement has the same principle written into regulation: FAR 15.304 requires that the factors affecting the award, and their relative importance, be stated clearly in the solicitation, and that those factors support meaningful comparison between proposals. A private lodge is not bound by federal rules, but the logic transfers. If agencies know what you value, they write proposals that address it, and you can score them side by side.
Section 14: How proposals will be scored
Put your criteria and weights in the RFP itself. The weights below are an example starting point, not an industry standard; TrinityP3 notes that weighting should reflect your priorities and shift with the kind of agency you are hiring. Adjust them to your situation before you send the document, then leave them alone.
Understanding of the property and its guests (example weight: 20 of 100 points). Did the agency read your brief, get your seasons and programs right, and describe your guests accurately?
Plan tied to your outcomes (25 points). Does the plan connect to filled dates, direct bookings, inquiry quality, or your other stated goals, rather than a list of activities?
Measurement and reporting (15 points). Will you be able to see whether it is working, in booking terms, on a schedule you can live with?
Team and fit (15 points). Are the day-to-day people named, experienced with businesses like yours, and reachable during your season?
Terms, ownership, and transparency (10 points). Do you own your website, domain, ad accounts, analytics, content, and guest data, and can you leave without losing them?
Cost relative to the value proposed (15 points). Does the price make sense for the scope, and is everything that costs money disclosed?
Score each written proposal, ideally with one other person who knows the business, before you meet any agency, and write a sentence of justification next to each score. Then invite the top two or three to a conversation and use it to test the parts you scored lowest. Adjust scores afterward only where you learned something new, not because one presentation was more charming.
Red Flags in the Responses
A good brief makes weak proposals easy to spot. Watch for these patterns as you score:
The proposal describes services but never mentions your occupancy pattern, your booking engine, or your OTA mix
Success is defined in impressions, followers, or traffic, with no path to bookings or deposits
Guaranteed rankings, guaranteed booking numbers, or results promised on a fixed date
No named day-to-day team, or a team that changes between the proposal and the meeting
Vague contract terms on who owns the website, domain, ad accounts, and data
Pricing that hides pass-through costs, setup fees, or long minimum terms
A plan that ignores the timeline you gave, such as a website rebuild landing in the middle of your peak booking window
Our list of 14 agency red flags goes deeper on the promises that should end a conversation, and it pairs well with this rubric.
Before You Hit Send
Read the finished document as if you were an agency seeing your lodge for the first time. Every section above answers a question an agency would otherwise have to guess at: what you sell and to whom, what success means in booking terms, how a reservation actually happens, how dependent you are on OTAs, what you can spend, when you need to decide, what a response must contain, and how it will be judged. If any of those is missing, fill it in or say plainly that you do not know. The result is often a handful of pages plus the question list: short enough to read carefully, specific enough that every proposal answers the same questions.
Work with Pine & Marsh
If you are getting ready to hire marketing help for a lodge, cabin property, or sporting operation in the Southeast, we are glad to talk it through, whether or not Pine & Marsh ends up on your list. A discovery call is a good place to pressure-test your goals, your booking data, and your OTA mix before the RFP goes out.
Book a discovery call or ask for a free marketing check, and we will show you where your current setup is strong and where an agency would need to start.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a marketing RFP?
A marketing RFP, or request for proposal, is the document a business sends to a shortlist of agencies describing what it needs and asking each one to respond in the same format. A useful one has two halves: the buyer's brief (who you are, what you want to achieve, your current setup, budget range, and timeline) and the questions every agency must answer. Without the brief, the answers cannot be compared.
What should a lodge include in a marketing RFP besides questions for the agency?
Include the outcomes you want, measured in filled dates, direct bookings, and inquiry quality; your current marketing channels; your booking engine and how bookings flow; your OTA and marketplace mix; a budget range; a timeline with decision dates; and the scoring rubric you will use. Those are the pieces agencies need to scope and price the work honestly.
Should a lodge share a budget range in the RFP?
Yes. Without a range every agency guesses, and you get proposals priced for completely different scopes. Several RFP guides note that some strong agencies decline briefs that hide the budget. A range, rather than a single number, still leaves room for agencies to show what they would do at different levels.
What does an agency need from a lodge to price a proposal fairly?
It needs to know the size and seasonality of the business, which programs and lodging types you sell, where bookings come from today, what booking engine and website platform you use, how much of your business runs through OTAs or marketplaces, what you have tried before, and what you can spend. With that, an agency can scope real work instead of a generic package.
How is a hotel group RFP different from a lodge marketing RFP?
A hotel group RFP is a request from a planner or group asking a property to quote rooms, event space, and catering for a meeting or event. A lodge marketing RFP runs the other direction: the lodge is the buyer, asking agencies to propose marketing work. If you search for a hospitality RFP template, many results are the group-booking kind, which will ask agencies for the wrong things.
What is the difference between an RFI and an RFP?
An RFI, or request for information, is a short screening document used to narrow a long list of agencies on basics like experience, size, and fit. An RFP is the fuller document sent only to the few agencies still in the running. The ANA and 4As have long recommended that sequence, and their standardized RFI warns that RFIs have grown until they are confused with RFPs.
How should a lodge score the proposals that come back?
Decide the criteria and their weights before any proposal arrives, write them into the RFP, and score each written response against the same sheet before you meet anyone. Typical criteria for a lodge are understanding of your business, a plan tied to your outcomes, measurement and reporting, the named team, terms and ownership, and cost against the value proposed.
Should a lodge ask agencies for free creative or a sample campaign?
It is better not to. Ask instead how the agency would approach one real problem you have, such as a shoulder season that will not fill, and what assumption its approach depends on. That shows how the agency thinks without asking for unpaid production work that has little to do with what it will actually deliver.
Sources
Acquisition.gov (U.S. General Services Administration) -- FAR 15.304 Evaluation factors and significant subfactors -- https://www.acquisition.gov/far/15.304 -- accessed October 2026
ANA and 4As -- ANA/4As Standardized RFI Template -- https://www.aaaa.org/resource/ana-4as-standardized-rfi-template -- accessed October 2026
ANA -- ANA and 4A's Publish Guidelines for an Effective Agency Search -- https://www.ana.net/content/show/id/pr-2011-agency-search -- accessed October 2026
Kitsap County, Washington -- Request for Proposals: Designated Marketing Organization -- https://kitsap.gov/das/Documents/2026-019%20RFP%20DMO%20Kitsap%20County%20072426%20GM.pdf -- accessed October 2026
Marriott -- Request for Proposal (meetings and events) -- https://www.marriott.com/meeting-event-hotels/how-to-book/rfp.mi -- accessed October 2026
WebFX -- How to Write a Marketing Request for Proposal (November 4, 2024) -- https://www.webfx.com/blog/marketing/how-to-write-a-marketing-request-for-proposal/ -- accessed October 2026
Altitude Marketing -- Marketing RFP how-to and template (March 14, 2024) -- https://altitudemarketing.com/blog/marketing-rfp-how-to-template/ -- accessed October 2026
Levie Mir -- Marketing Agency RFP Template: Free Word Download -- https://leviemir.com/marketing-agency-rfp-template/ -- accessed October 2026
TrinityP3 -- Marketing Agency RFP Template (Free Download) -- https://www.trinityp3.com/agency-selection/marketing-agency-rfp-template/ -- accessed October 2026
Pine & Marsh -- The Outfitter Marketing Agency Hiring Guide: 27-Question RFP Template, Red Flags, and What to Verify Before Signing -- https://www.pineandmarsh.com/post/the-outfitter-marketing-agency-hiring-guide-27-question-rfp-template-red-flags-and-what-to-verify -- accessed October 2026
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