American Express now is providing electronic folio data for nearly 2,800 InterContinental Hotels Group properties in the United States through an agreement the two companies announced today.
With the addition of IHG—owner of the InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Hotel Indigo, Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites brands—American Express now collects electronic data from about 12,000 properties in North America and around the world. American Express already had e-folio agreements with Marriott International, Carlson Hotels Worldwide, Choice Hotels International, Omni Hotels and, most recently, Starwood Hotels & Resorts. Its agreements now cover about 71 percent of its clients' global commercial card spending in the United States, according to American Express.
"We're aggressively building our capability to offer our corporate card clients the folio detail they need on lodging expenses to give them extra power to analyze costs and identify new ways to save," Jay Cary, American Express' vice president of interactive product management for global commercial card, said in a statement. "We're very pleased to offer clients a breakdown of lodging spend from IHG."
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
(BTNonline, Aug. 25, 2003).
The American Express agreement is IHG's second with a major corporate card supplier. In late 2006, it announced an agreement with MasterCard Worldwide to provide the data to the network's clients
(BTNonline, Nov. 7, 2006).