HRS last week announced
that it integrated the AirPlus Mobile AIDA virtual payment solution for hotel
bookings. The solution is available immediately free of charge for all of the
hotel booking portal's 35,000 corporate customers, according to AirPlus. HRS
managing director of United Kingdom and Ireland Jon West told BTN that HRS has five "large,
international" companies piloting the solution.
When users book a
hotel reservation through HRS, a virtual MasterCard number is generated and
automatically sent to the hotel, a system that AirPlus claims will offer
corporations a more "efficient" accounting process and travelers "simplified
travel expense reports." With this new central payment method, travelers and
their companies "no longer will have to pay in advance" for accommodations,
according to AirPlus.
"It's not a lot different to how we currently operate with a lodge
card," West said, "the difference being that it's a virtual card from
AirPlus and it's dynamic to every order. Therefore it has the security of not
being abused by anybody in the process."
Furthermore, with
Mobile AIDA, travel managers can control spending by allowing or disallowing such
expenses as breakfast, Wi-Fi and parking, and also set specific transaction
amounts and expiration dates per transaction. Meanwhile, hotels are guaranteed
payment even if the traveler arrives late.
After checkout, hotel
expenses can be settled centrally through the linked AirPlus company account.
Companies also can define up to nine specific data fields to be displayed on
invoices, including cost center, staff identification number and project number.
To activate the
service, HRS clients tick a box in their existing user interface portals. HRS clients
without an AirPlus account can automatically create one through the portal.
HRS also is planning
to implement a "paperless travel product" to allow invoices with
revisions to run through the hotel portal directly. "Since invoice data is
provided digitally, items can be broken down and value-added tax can be
displayed per item," AirPlus claimed. "This will make data processing
in enterprise resource planning and settlement systems significantly
easier."
While the virtual
card service is free, users would pay a fee for the paperless travel product. That
fee has not been determined, but West said it likely will be between €1 and €9
per transaction, depending on the transaction volume a company generates.
“If you've ever tried to reconcile a statement from a credit card
company, the merchant name is not always the name of hotel or in same country,"
West said. "In the past it was guesswork for allocation. In the second
paperless solution, this is where the level two data is aggregated on all
bookings.
AirPlus officially
launched Mobile AIDA in June. AirPlus officials in August told BTN that the payment company is working
on bringing the virtual card solution to the United States by February 2014.