WORDS ROB GILL
PAYMENTS
into place much more quickly than in more normal times.”
VIRTUAL SOLUTIONS Thankfully technology and particularly the advance of virtual card payments, where a single-use “virtual” 16-digit number takes the place of a physical card, has helped to automate these convoluted manual processes and made life easier for TMCs as well as travel buyers and their organisation’s finance departments. “The industry has traditionally used hotel bill back as the way to pay for accommodation but now we have pre-paid virtual cards, which is a much better way
In association with
of managing hotel spending,” says Geall. “This means we don’t have to worry about getting the invoice from the hotel. It is also more secure because you don’t have to use a company card, which could be problematic in terms of potential fraud or the card falling into the wrong hands. “The traditional payment methods required substantial time to reconcile the payments, and it was an expensive process. Virtual cards are very much the future of how we manage hotel accommodation. You can make a reservation and assign a virtual card to it, which can only be debited once or twice, with the payment aligned to that hotel. So they offer better levels
of control, and full tracking for invoice reconciliation.” That’s not to say that the manual bill back processes are completely obsolete, as some hotels in certain parts of the world still prefer to invoice TMCs in the traditional way (see panel, page 22).
ADDED CONTROL
Another advantage of using virtual cards is that they allow organisations to have greater control over what crew members can spend at a hotel in terms of additional expenses, so they may have an allowance for a meal at the property but could be banned from consuming alcohol during
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