Fare Audit, Inc., the travel auditing firm acquired by Partnership Travel Consulting in early 2025, has partnered with hotel commissions collection specialist CTS Systems to bolster hotel commission recovery for travel management companies and accredited Corporate Travel Departments, Fare Audit president Andrew Menkes told BTN Wednesday.
Under the arrangement, Fare Audit can scan hotel segments in global distribution systems daily and deliver to CTS weekly reports organized by client that identify the bookings that are commissionable as well as the commission percentage.
The partnership addresses a long-standing inefficiency in hotel commission recovery. According to CTS CEO Mark Lewington, agencies and Airlines Reporting Corp.-accredited CTDs that don't actively pursue hotel commissions typically collect only about a third of what they're owed. Lewington in a statement said CTS's collection rate approaches 90 percent.
"We can shorten that lifecycle by letting CTS know in a weekly report of all hotel bookings made for this client, under that pseudo city code and ARC number, here is the list of commissions that are payable based on the bookings we see," Menkes told BTN. "That means CTS only has to go after the ones that are commission-eligible."
Fare Audit's role is limited to reporting which bookings are eligible; only CTS is involved in the collections process itself. Menkes told BTN that corporates also could use Fare Audit's eligibility data as a benchmark against what their TMC returns to them for hotel commissions.