Fifteen Percent Lower Is a Missing Row, Not a Discount

A fifteen percent gap on the same sixty rooms is almost never a discount. It is a scope difference that has not been priced yet. Both quotations can be internally consistent and still describe two different room sets, two different panel grades and two different inspection arrangements. Reading the totals again will not settle it. Fix one row list, put both quotes against it, then re-price every row that only one of them contains. If the gap survives that arithmetic, you have a real price difference and a supplier worth keeping. If the gap closes, you were never being offered a lower price. You were being offered fewer things.

Compare the Room Set Before the Total

The first comparison is not price. It is the definition of a room set, because that single phrase hides more of a hotel quotation than any other. One supplier counts a room set as the bed, two nightstands, a wardrobe and a desk. Another counts the same five items plus the headboard, the mirror, the minibar cabinet, the luggage bench and the fixing kit. Both write “sixty room sets” on the cover page. The totals are then compared as if they describe the same building.

Row that must be present in both quotes	What the lower quote usually says instead	What it costs you later
Room set definition, item by item, per room type	“Full guest room package” with no item list	The missing items return as a variation at the higher quote’s price, after the deposit is paid
Panel grade and thickness per component	“Plywood” or “E1 board”	A thinner panel changes weight, fixing and rigidity, and shows up first in the drawer bottoms
Foam density with a unit and a test method	“High density foam”	Seat cushions lose height in the first year, and there is nothing to claim against
Finish system with dry film build	“Three coats” or “PU finish”	A thin build wears through at the pull and the top edge within a season
Hardware by brand, series and cycle rating	“Soft close hinges”	Slider and hinge replacement starts in month nine, at your labour cost
Packing grade and carton specification	“Standard export packing”	Corner damage on a share of the order, discovered on site with no recourse
Pre-shipment inspection scope and who pays	“Quality checked before loading”	No checkpoints, no photographs, and no bargaining position while the container is still at the factory
Fixing kit, spares and touch-up materials	Not mentioned	Site team improvises brackets, and the first damaged door has no matching panel

Eight rows, and every one of them can be absent from a quotation that still looks professional. The table is deliberately not a checklist of quality. It is a list of rows that must exist before a price can be compared at all.

The second half of the room set problem is quantity. Sixty rooms is rarely one room type. A hotel of that size usually has a standard king, a twin, a suite and at least one accessible room, and each type carries a different item count and a different wardrobe width. A quote that prices sixty identical rooms has either made an assumption or is quoting the largest type for every room, and both appear as a single tidy number. Ask for the room type schedule and the quantity of each type, then check that both quotes used the same mix. A shift of six rooms from standard to suite moves a total by more than some of the rows above.

Accessible rooms deserve their own line rather than a note. They change clearances, they change the fixing method for anything wall hung, and they often require a different mirror height and a reinforced fixing point. A quotation that folds them into the standard room set has not priced them, and the first site instruction will be the expensive one.

Four Fields That Have to Become Numbers

Half of the fifteen percent hides inside adjectives. Four fields decide most of it, and each one converts from a word into a number with a short question.

Foam Density, With a Unit and a Method

Density and firmness are different properties, and quotations blur them on purpose. Ask for density in kilograms per cubic metre, component by component, with the test method named. Seat foam, back foam and any comfort wrap are three separate lines, and a quote that gives one number for “foam” is describing one of the three. A density figure without a method is a claim, not a specification, and it cannot be compared with the other quote’s figure even when both use the same unit.

Finish, as Dry Film Build Rather Than Coats

“Three coats” is a process description and it is compatible with a finish thin enough to wear through in a season, if each coat is light and nothing is sanded between them. What you can compare is the dry film thickness in microns at a named location, the number of sanding and sealing steps, and the test the factory uses on a production panel. Ask for the finish schedule as a sequence with a thickness target, and the coat count becomes a detail rather than the headline.

Hardware, by Series and Cycle Rating

A hinge brand is not a hinge. The same brand sells a domestic series and a contract series that differ in cycle rating, and the price difference between them is small enough to disappear inside a room set. Ask for the series and the rated cycles for hinges, runners and any lift mechanism, and write the series into the schedule. If the factory cannot name a series, the lower quote is quoting the cheapest item the brand makes.

The Inspection Allowance and Its Spend-Back Rule

An allowance is often the largest single number in a hotel quotation and the least examined. Two things decide whether it is real: the percentage of contract value it represents, and whether unspent allowance returns to you. An allowance with no spend-back rule is a discount the factory keeps. Ask for both figures, plus who pays for a re-inspection after rework, and the allowance stops being a soft number.

Put the Missing Rows Back and Re-Add

This is the step that turns an opinion into a finding, and it takes one afternoon with a spreadsheet.

1. Build one row list from the higher quote, because the higher quote almost always contains more rows. Keep its wording so nothing is lost in translation.
2. Mark each row in the lower quote as priced, vague or absent. Vague counts as absent for this exercise.
3. For each absent or vague row, take the higher quote’s unit rate and multiply by the quantity that applies across sixty rooms and each room type.
4. Add those figures to the lower quote’s total. Do not adjust anything else yet.
5. Compare the new totals. A gap that closes to within a few percent was scope, and the cheaper supplier was never cheaper.
6. If a gap remains, it is a genuine price difference, and now you can ask the expensive supplier to explain it line by line rather than defending a total.

Two things usually happen at step five. The first is that the gap closes. The second is that one or two rows remain genuinely cheaper, and those rows tell you where the factory is efficient: a panel line it runs itself, a finish line it owns, a hardware volume it buys well. That is the information you wanted from the exercise, and no total on a cover page can give it to you.

Questions to Send Both Suppliers

What to ask about the room set

Send one page with the item list per room type and the quantity per room, and ask each supplier to return it filled in, not to re-quote. A supplier that returns the list with two items removed has told you where its price came from. A supplier that returns it complete, with the same quantities, has agreed to be compared. This page also settles the unit of measure problem, because a per-set price and a per-piece price cannot be lined up until the set is defined.

What to ask about the third-party inspection

Ask which checkpoints the inspection covers, who attends, what is photographed, and what happens to a defect found after the container is sealed. The packing grade belongs in the same question, because the packaging test procedure a carton is supposed to survive is published by ISTA, and a quote that names a carton grade without a test series is naming a word. The full inspection schedule, including who pays for a re-inspection, is worth writing into the order rather than leaving in an email.

What the Lower Quote Has Proven

A lower total proves one thing on its own: that someone wrote a shorter document. That is not a criticism of the supplier, and it is not a reason to disqualify it. Some factories quote short because they intend to build what you described and see no reason to repeat it. The problem is that a short document cannot be compared with a long one, and a sixty-room order is a poor place to discover the difference.

Run the row-presence test, re-add the missing rows, and then choose. If the short quote survives the arithmetic, it is the better commercial answer and the cheaper supplier deserves the order. If it does not, you have saved the deposit and the argument. EverGoCasa quotes hotel packages against a fixed item list per room type for exactly this reason, and any Foshan source factory can be asked to do the same before a quotation round closes. The list is not extra work for the buyer. It is the only part of the comparison that produces a number you can act on.

Two supporting pages are worth reading before you send the list: the lead time and minimum quantity structure explains why a short quote often reflects a smaller production batch, and the warranty and contract terms page covers the clauses that the missing inspection row would otherwise have carried.