In an effort to change the global hotel corporate payment process, end-to-end business travel technology provider HRS is rolling out a new corporate hotel payment platform. The Invisible Pay product aims to tackle the longstanding challenge of “high levels of out-of-policy spend and insufficient use of preferred hotels” through “advanced payment automation,” the company said in an announcement.
HRS CEO Tobias Ragge said in the announcement, “As we’ve piloted with integrated hotel payment solutions around the world in recent years, the program compliance metrics are clear.” He continued, “When our clients use our payment solutions, we’ve seen hotel compliance rise by on average 23 percent. The downstream savings – both in room rate and more seamless expense processing – increasingly drive CFOs to deploy across oceans and maximize the incremental savings.”
HRS’ Invisible Pay business unit harnesses innovative check-in/check-out payment technology along with the company solutions. Business travelers have tapped into the company’s automated payment solutions in over 150 countries this year, covering over $1 billion (USD) worth of transactions. The company takes in, audits and reconciles all invoices, while digitizing the resulting information for corporate travel analysis as well as process automation. Its payments solutions are also used in China, which the company said is “a market with complex corporate hotel payment regulations” by the country’s top high-tech, eCommerce, mobile and telecommunication firms.
HRS said that GBTA research released in July indicates that business travelers crave simpler, more seamless payment processes. The company pointed out that 88 percent of business travelers surveyed said if their firms offered central or direct payment with a hotel, they would reserve that property over one that does not offer that method.
The company also noted that Invisible Pay benefits three corporate audiences: business travelers, accounting departments and travel procurement, adding that “hotels also gain from secure data processes that minimize engagement for their finance departments.”