The AirPlus payment solution is now integrated in the HRS ‘Global Payment’ product and offers a central payment solution for global hotel bookings, as well as an additional HRS ‘Paperless Travel’ solution.
HRS, the Hotel Solutions Provider, in cooperation with the international credit card provider AirPlus, is now offering 35,000 corporate customers around the world alternatives to paying directly at their hotel.
The AirPlus payment solution is now integrated in the HRS ‘Global Payment’ product and offers a central payment solution for global hotel bookings, as well as an additional HRS ‘Paperless Travel’ solution. Thanks to high data quality and more detailed information, companies may identify further saving potentials through their hotel expenses and further optimise their acquisition strategy. This also helps processes inside finance departments become more efficient. Travellers will profit from a simplified travel expense report and do not have to pay in advance, while third party companies may omit travel advances for the hotel stay.
Working with AirPlus, HRS has enhanced its product portfolio by offering a more streamlined service for hotel bookings, from the hotel purchase to the booking process and finally the payment itself. “We want to offer our customer simpler methods to deal with hotel expenses, as they already experience this with their air travel expenses”, explains Tobias Ragge, CEO of HRS. “By integrating the AirPlus payment solution into Global Payment, corporate customers are now offered more transparency and automated processes that will save time and costs.” With both brands enjoying strong global presence and direct contact to the hotels, HRS and AirPlus offer these solutions to customers around the world.
Global Payment: Paying with a virtual credit card
If a customer adopts the ‘Global Payment‘ solution, a virtual MasterCard Number is generated and sent to the booked hotel for each booking made through the individual HRS corporate customer portal. This solution is based on A.I.D.A. (AirPlus Integrated Data and Acceptance) and may rely on the global online acceptance of the MasterCard network. The virtual credit card not only ensures better control of the travel guidelines, it helps Travel Management achieve active control. Using Global Payment, Travel Management may choose to define certain services such as breakfast, Wi-Fi or parking facilities as covered by the company. At the same time, the virtual credit card acts as a payment guarantee for the hotel in case of a late arrival, for example.
All hotel expenses are centrally billed to the integrated AirPlus company account after check-out. Up to nine additional data entry fields such as the cost centre, personnel number or project number may be integrated into the billing document for the companies. This enhanced data quality will allow an easier allocation and analysis of the costs incurred.
“With A.I.D.A. we offer a tried and tested as well as a central solution to HRS customers, who want to use a simple and efficient payment system”, explains Michael Fuerer, Director Sales Germany with AirPlus. The implementation of the ‘Global Payment’ solution will occur imminently and is free for HRS corporate customers.
Paperless Travel: Invoice processing by HRS
Further cooperation with AirPlus has resulted in the combination of booking, payment and billing data in the HRS ‘Paperless Travel’ product. Using this product, HRS supports its corporate customers in the billing process: invoices are made via the hotel portal. By providing the invoice data centrally in a digitised form, separate services can be listed separately and the VAT values are shown on the individual item level. The processing in the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and invoice systems is significantly simplified.
“Paperless Travel provides a valuable contribution to the further optimisation of travel expense management”, says Tobias Ragge, who is delighted and convinced that the new product will be very well received in the market. By combining the data, the partners see great potential to foster the shared products in order to increase added value for corporate customers.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
