Electronic hotel folio data is reaching critical mass for corporate travel buyers following InterContinental Hotels Group's announcement that it will provide that data beginning in January.
Through an agreement with MasterCard, IHG—which includes the InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Hotel Indigo, Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites brands—will provide line-expense data from more than 2,600 of its U.S. properties next year, and analysts said agreements with other card providers are imminent. Buyers now have access to e-folio data from about 60 percent of domestic properties, said Maria Chevalier, vice president of global business intelligence for BCD Travel's Advito consulting division.
"It's really exciting, because it allows us to have more credible data," Chevalier said. "Data is just the key to good negotiations and good decision-making, and this allows everyone to do that."
IHG is one of the largest hotel companies to make e-folio data available, joining Marriott International, Hilton Hotels Corp., Carlson Hotels Worldwide, Choice Hotels and Omni, among others. Marriott became the first multibrand hotel to make the practice standard earlier this year, expanding e-folio to all its hotels except Ritz-Carlton.
Higher levels of data availability means corporate usage of e-folio data will increase significantly in 2007, Chevalier said. The National Business Travel Association's 2007 Business Travel Overview and Cost Forecast, which surveyed 189 NBTA buyer members, showed more than one-third of respondents planned to implement e-folio data.
While card feeds from most hotel transactions show only the sum of the parts, e-folio transmission enables such line-item details as restaurant, room service, telephone and business center charges, in addition to the room rate and taxes, to be itemized and sent electronically to clients. Corporate travel managers long have considered electronic folio essential to a seamless expense-reporting process
(BTN, Aug. 25, 2003).Brian Nichols, hotel and ground transportation manager for Deloitte Services LLP, said he was thrilled by the IHG announcement. "We are working with our internal technology team to build a data warehouse," he said. "The data will be pulled into our expense tool, SAP, and reside in the data warehouse so we can query it for reporting needs."
Deloitte's e-folio program will go online by the first or second quarter of next year, he said. "We have to have critical mass on the hotel side," he said. "Timing-wise, for us, the timeline most of the hotel chains are on works."
Other businesses, including Credit Suisse
(BTN, Oct. 31, 2005), Dupont and Johnson & Johnson either have or are planning to implement e-folio data into their travel program, Chevalier said.
A survey last year of 100 U.S. corporate travel buyers conducted by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives and MasterCard, however, showed about half of respondents would consider the data valuable only if it covered at least 75 percent of their hotel spend. "It's all based on the demand," she said. "If the public continues to demand it and apply it, it will come."