Hotel solutions company HRS has launched Invisible Pay, a platform that
enables advanced payment automation for hotel stays. It aims to provide a
two-click solution for travelers in which HRS reduces friction in the
booking, payment and expense process and eases traveler
check-in/check-out. The service takes part of the
technology created by Conichi, which
HRS purchased earlier this year, and enhanced it with additional new features.
When a traveler from a corporation using HRS books a hotel, Invisible Pay creates a
virtual card that it passes to the hotel. HRS guarantees virtual card
acceptance at the front desk upon check-in and supports online invoice
splitting upon checkout via an email to the traveler that offers options to add
a personal card for ancillary purchases. HRS then collects the invoice on
behalf of the traveler, ensures it is correct for VAT reclaim, then funnels
that information into the expense tool. The second click from the traveler is
to acknowledge the expense receipt. Unlike with Conichi, the hotel doesn't have
to be onboarded individually.
"The beauty of Invisible Pay is it works irrespective
of what the online booking tool set up is of the corporate, we work with all
the leading OBTs," HRS COO of Invisble Pay Maximilian Waldmann told BTN. "We'll
create a match to have one solution between the two. We'll have that Level 3
data visibility to fully understand what has been consumed in the hotel. Look
at a standard program, there are 20 to 30 percent in auxiliary charges that are
not being taken into consideration for the overall sourcing. Take a $100
million [hotel] program, that is $20 million lost in negotiating volume.
[Invisible Pay] is creating transparency."
HRS began piloting the new payment system in January with
more than 10 of its large clients. Year to date it has processed more than $1
billion in transactions. Waldmann said travelers are seeing an average expense
report savings of 20 euros per trip, a 15 percent increase in VAT reclaim, plus
time savings—the pilot drove accounting processing time down from seven minutes
to one minute, and invoice accuracy increased from 79 percent to 98.8 percent.
The clients have also seen up to a 30 percent increase in both credit card
rebates and in hotel program adoption. The average hotel program adoption
increase among pilot companies is 23 percent.
Waldmann said HRS has 500 people monitoring what is
happening on the ground and how hotels are accepting the card. "The
important component here is to have a technology that fits into the standard
operating procedures of the hotels," he said. "You look at Europe and
75 percent of hotels are independent. Hotels can write invoices in all kinds of
formats. For us, the opportunity of increasing adoption is so massive that
every manual step we take is worthwhile because it drives adoption."
Clients are charged a per transaction fee for
use of the platform.
RELATED: HRS Acquires Conichi