The Knowledge > Buyer perspective
Why hotels should... GET THEIR INVOICING RIGHT
Travel buyer Lin Burgess of Xchanging voices her frustrations with sloppy hoteliers
JARGON BUSTER ➔ ACRONYMS: sadly you just can't get away
from them in the dynamic world of business travel. So to help you out we've listed some of the most commonly used ones below, just so you don't get your Frequent Flyer Programmes confused with the Faculty of Family Planning.
ACFO ACTE ADR APIS ATOC
Lin Burgess CATEGORY MANAGER TRAVEL, XCHANGING Lin has worked in procurement for 17 years. Her responsibilities have included travel as well as other indirect services such as T&E cards and corporate purchasing cards. She transferred into Xchanging from BAE Systems at its inception in 2003 and is now part of a team of eight travel experts. Lin’s historic role within Xchanging procure- ment services covered hotels, conferences, car hire and rail. But with an expanding team over the last few years – in line with an expanding client base – she is now able to concentrate on sourcing and strategic activities for hotels and conferencing over the XPS customer portfolio.
BAR BTA BTC
MY BIGGEST bug bear is correct hotel invoicing when payment is made by the guest on departure. Hotels give me a corporate rate but they don’t follow through and give me a corporate invoice. When the confirmation comes through from our agency it clearly requests that the legal entity of the company that the invoice must be made to be included. This is in order for the client to be able to reclaim the VAT element of the hotel bill. We have worked with our HBA to alter these confirmation forms and highlight in bold our requirements in a bid to try and eradicate the problem. It clearly states that it is the guests’ responsibility that they obtain a valid VAT invoice quoting the company name and address. Invariably, the invoice is made out
to the address the guest gives at check-in (often their home address), especially if the confirmation goes via a central process. If it went to an individual property buyers would stand
a better chance. Loyalty
“The onus is on the traveller to check the invoice is made out correctly and they can’t be bothered“
cards with home addresses can also override the company's details. If the hotel takes details
of the name of the guest, the dates of stay and the corporate rate to apply, then why are they not interested in ensuring that the invoice address is correct to enable the client
to reclaim the VAT? For big corporates where a corporate card
is used it is a big problem. I have been campaigning about
this for many years now. The larger hotels often do not have a robust system in place to ensure the correct corporate name and address is put onto the invoice (unless you are a frequent guest and have a hotel profile) and generally do not seem interested in doing much to assist. The hotels all listen but they don’t
do anything about it. No one hotel chain is better at this than another. They say, ‘We will do our best and we’re sure it happens’, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t help that staff retention at hotels is low so you might educate some check-in staff but they soon move on. London hotels are major offenders. We undertook an audit with one London hotel we use and that hotel now works perfectly. The relationship between hotel
and buyer could be strengthened if they sorted it out and made sure the invoice was sent to the client company but it falls into a black hole most of the time. Currently, this situation puts the
onus on the traveller to check the invoice is made out correctly and they can’t be bothered or they are usually in a hurry in the morning and don’t have time to wait and have it changed. Obviously I am tarring everybody
with the same brush but I have yet to find one chain where correct invoicing is consistent. With VAT going up to 20 per cent and corporates with multimillion pound hotel spends, it is a nonsense that this is not a priority.
CDW CRM CRO CRS CSR DDR ETES FFP
GDS
GTMC HBA
HBAA IATA ITM KPI LRA MI
MIA MPI OTM PNR RFP ROI SBT SLA SME TEM TMC
Association of Car Fleet Operators
Association of Corporate Travel Executives average daily room rate
Advanced Passenger Information System Association of Train Operating Companies
BAPCO British Association of Professional Conference Organisers
best available rate business travel agent business travel centre collision damage waiver
customer relationship management central reservation office central reservation system corporate social responsibility daily delegate rate end-to-end solution
frequent flyer programme global distribution system
Guild of Travel Management Companies hotel booking agent
Hotel Bookings Agents Association International Air Transport Association Institute of Travel & Meetings key performance indicators last room availability
management information Meetings Industry Association
Meetings Professionals International online travel management passenger name records request for proposal return on investment self-booking tools
service level agreement
small and/or medium-sized business/es travel and expense management travel management company
8 I THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
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