Visa today announced a partnership with Hilton Hotels Corp. to electronically transmit hotel folio data to corporate clients.
In conjunction with its member banks and more than 2,000 Hilton properties, Visa said the partnership would enable the automated transmission of level-three or line-item data on hotel transactions, which include taxes, telephone/in-room charges and room service, among other ancillary expenses, rather than simply the total transaction amount. This means Visa cardholders no longer have to enter such items manually into their expense management software, since the data is prepopulated from Visa.
Visa officials said that while they still are working to determine which expense reporting tools can accept this level of data, the Extensity and Concur tools have these capabilities.
As Visa's member banks are at "different levels of implementation," Visa and Hilton have yet to sign corporate clients who will be accessing the data, but both companies expect strides within the next couple of months.
"Our clients tell us this remains a high priority for them, so we expect a high level of response and expect to have a beta test underway by the end of the quarter," said Steve Armitage, Hilton senior vice president of sales.
Mike Dreyer, Visa senior vice president of commercial solutions, added that this level of data would enable a more streamlined expense reporting process for travelers and managers, as well as better data for negotiations and a stronger check on traveler compliance.
"From a technical and systemic basis, it works," Dreyer said. "Now it's just a matter of putting the information through the pipeline and getting it to the corporate clients so they can take the next steps."
The Visa/Hilton initiative follows e-folio's slow evolution despite strong interest among corporate travel managers in attaining more sophisticated levels of hotel data
(BTN, Oct. 7, 2002).