American Express corporate card customers this week gained access to electronic hotel folio datafrom InterContinental Hotel Group's nearly 2,800 properties, the companies announced Tuesday. The hotel spending detail is available to corporate card customers for stays at any IHG brand, including InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites, Candlewood Suites and Hotel Indigo.
Instead of just the total transaction amount, corporate travel managers and cardholders gain electronic access for reporting and analysis to all data on hotel folios, such as room night charges; taxes; in-room movies; food and beverage charges from restaurants, room service, the minibar, bars or other outlets; business services, such as Internet access, phone calls, faxes or copying; parking; and ground transportation.
Amex said there is no additional fee to access the new IHG folio data. However, corporate travel managers must register to receive the new data feeds through the American Express @ Work hotel folio reports and through a room rate analysis report. Corporations that already subscribe to electronic charge feeds to expense reporting systems likewise would need to register for the IHG folio detail to flow into their expense tools, but would incur no additional cost for the enhanced reporting.
Folio reports help managers identify new savings opportunities, according to prepared statements attributed to W.R. Grace global travel services director Lorraine Rostanzo: "At one hotel where we have thousands of room nights, I saved $10,000 per year by negotiating for free bottled water for our employees. And at other hotels we use, I studied my reporting to negotiate 10 percent off meals at on-property restaurants." The company spends about $6 million a year on lodging.
"As we get hotel folio data that reflects our spending at more hotels, we will be better equipped to look for even greater ways to save and control lodging costs," Rostanzo added.
With major hotel chains, American Express said it now "collects folio data from nearly 12,000 hotel properties in North America and around the world" that cover more than 63 percent of its clients' global commercial card lodging spend at chains. In the United States, agreements now cover 71 percent of client chain hotel spend billed to the Amex card, an increase of 10 percentage points from last year.
Amex previously signed e-folio agreements with Carlson Hotels, Choice Hotels International, Hilton Hotels Corp., Marriott International, Omni Hotels and Starwood Hotels & Resorts.
"We continue to talk to large chains that are missing from the hotel portfolio," said Jay Cary, global commercial card vice president of interactive product management with American Express. "But the objective isn't to get to 100 percent this year," as the effort to garner the rest will take longer. Directed by corporate customers, Cary said, the focus this year has been to expand e-folio availability from hotels in the United States.
Globally, e-folio is more challenging "for a variety of reasons," he acknowledged. Among them are privacy, legal restrictions and nonstandard technology, sometimes within the same chain. Nevertheless, Cary said, Amex has increased global e-folio coverage to 63.4 percent of clients' lodging spend on commercial cards.
Card competitors MasterCard and Visa likewise have signed deals with hotel chains to gain folio data for their corporate customers. About 10 percent of properties--about 12,000 hotels--in the United States, are capable of providing e-folio to MasterCard, global commerce development Seth Friedman said at an Association of Corporate Travel Executives event in April.
While useful to some corporations, polls and anecdotal evidence highlight the desire for critical mass for more widespread use of e-folio.
About 65 percent of 215 travel managers polled last September and October by the National Business Travel Association said they did not plan to use e-folio any time soon. Twenty-two percent already had e-folio in place, with another 13 percent planning to implement it this year.
"There just isn't that critical mass of participation," Priscilla Campbell, American Express Business Travel Advisory Services hotel practice leader, told Procurement.travel. "It can be the most robust data source, but it will be more relevant once we get there. It will be very powerful data to use along with straight corporate card data."
Even without greater availability, early adopters including W.R. Grace and Lockheed Martin report e-folio benefits. "We started using e-folio data last year, bringing it into our expense reporting system," said Lockheed Martin director of corporate travel services Richard Wooten during an ACTE conference in May. "We don't have all of the hotels we would like to have, but it certainly makes it easier from the travelers' standpoint, because they don't have to go through all this expense reporting. I think we are going to see travelers staying more only at e-folio hotels."