InterContinental Hotels Group will begin providing electronic hotel folio data next year for corporate travelers through an agreement with MasterCard Worldwide, the two companies announced today.
More than 2,600 of IHG's U.S. properties will join MasterCard's e-folio program beginning in January. With that addition, MasterCard would offer line-item expense data from more than 11,000 hotels in the United States and Canada, according to MasterCard.
"We are pleased to join the MasterCard enhanced folio program, which will allow us to provide our customers with more detailed and timely data on hotel expenses—a significant component of any company's T&E spending," Stephen Powell, IHG's senior vice president of worldwide sales said in a prepared statement.
IHG, which includes the InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites brands, is one of the largest hotel companies to avail e-folio data, joining Carlson Hotels Worldwide, Choice Hotels, Hilton Hotels Corp., Marriott and Omni, among others.
While card feeds from most hotel transactions break out 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 among the last frontiers to a seamless expense-reporting process
(BTN, Aug. 25, 2003).