Introduced in the 1990s, electronic hotel folio feeds itemize hotel bills to include room rates, taxes and ancillary costs, easing expense reporting and facilitating negotiating clarity. But experts said few buyers are investing in the expense management technology required to take advantage of e-folio, and suppliers still are not regularly delivering the data.
E-folio offers companies more detail on the actual dollars spent on such items as Internet access, food and beverage and parking--offering more leverage at the negotiating table. Companies can use this data to include new items in their hotel programs to receive a better overall value, according to Kathy Pruett, senior director of hotel consulting for BCD Travel's Advito consultancy.
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.
Meanwhile, about 12,000 hotel properties in the United States are capable of providing e-folio data, representing about 10 percent of all U.S. hotel properties, said MasterCard Worldwide vice president of global commerce development Seth Friedman during an Association of Corporate Travel Executives event in April.
Some travel buyers apparently are not taking advantage because most suppliers are not yet capable of offering e-folio.
"You definitely have a chicken and egg situation," said Friedman. "Buyers are hesitant to enroll in our hotel folio program because they don't really want to make the investment until they know their core suppliers can provide this information."
"There just isn't that critical mass of participation," according to Priscilla Campbell, American Express Business Travel Advisory Services hotel practice leader. "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."
E-folio integration essentially begins with hotel companies and credit card providers, but the process also requires interfaces with expense management systems.
[PULL_1]"We are integrating robust information into a procurement process, and the challenge is to turn a lot of data with a lot of formats that have to be cleansed and normalized," said Friedman.
MasterCard and American Express are working with hotel companies to update their internal systems and ensure that their clients receive e-folio. Meanwhile, Carlson Hotels, Choice Hotels, Hilton Hotels Corp., Marriott International, Omni Hotels and Wyndham Hotels and Resorts are readying their properties, according to Friedman.
"For us, it is something that we had in our plan for 2008, with the goal of getting it in place to demonstrate that we are making progress. It's about prioritizing your technology projects," said Greg Land, senior vice president of global sales for Wyndham.
In order to get the hotel properties onboard, corporations should include e-folio in their requests for proposals, Friedman said.
For corporations, in addition to accurate data, paper receipt reduction and time saved by accounts payable are other major benefits.
"We could have done this before, but it required us to update our expense report system," said corporate travel manager Michael Hall of Johnson Controls, which as of May was in the process of updating its systems. "The urgency to do that was not there because e-folio was not universal enough, and I don't see that happening for a long time."
According to Land, "There is value for the corporations; they just don't see all the broad benefits yet."
But some large firms are using e-folioalready. "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. "It is still pretty young. 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."
According to Johnson & Johnson manager of travel services Maria Chevalier, "We will start getting e-folio in the third quarter, and it is key to the traveler. It is predominately a U.S. initiative, and since we are a global entity, it is a challenge to use e-folio."