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American Express announced a new Hotel Folio partnership with The Ritz-Carlton. This new partnership allows American Express to provide its corporate card customers with free reports that analyze and itemize their lodging expenditures – such as parking, in-room services and meals – at 40 Ritz-Carlton properties across North America.
As companies continue to sharpen their focus on controlling business travel spending, this partnership gives American Express customers more data and greater visibility into their spending, creating more opportunities to save. In addition, hotels can benefit from participating in the Hotel Folio program: studies show a marked increase in spending consolidation at participating hotels by companies enrolled in the program.
“We’ve never seen greater corporate demand for Hotel Folio than right now, as businesses take proactive steps to control travel costs and strengthen their expense management programs,” said Jay Cary, Vice President, Interactive Product Management, Global Commercial Card at American Express. “Working together with The Ritz-Carlton, this agreement gives managers greater spend visibility and the insight to make better informed spending decisions, while making life easier for travelers dealing with expense reports.”
The partnership with The Ritz-Carlton adds to the folio agreements that American Express has in place with a number of leading hotel companies. American Express’ folio agreements now cover nearly 80 percent of its clients’ global commercial card hotel transactions in the U.S., more than any other corporate card issuer. American Express collects folio data from nearly 15,000 hotel properties with seven major hotel chains across North America and around the world.
“The Hotel Folio program will make us a more effective partner in helping our corporate customers manage their travel costs and streamline their expense reports,” said Simon Cooper, President, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. “In a tight economy, more and more of our business guests want to track their costs, and we are pleased to partner with American Express on this innovative travel management tool.”
Hotel Folio: Explained
Providing a detailed breakdown on hotel spending is crucial to clients because lodging is the second largest area of travel and entertainment (T&E) for corporate card clients. Breakdowns of lodging expenditures can help companies evaluate ancillary spending and investigate opportunities to further manage their T&E costs. Folio data also enables companies to track the use of negotiated room rates, as well as improve expense report processing.
American Express’ Hotel Folio reports provide key data on hotel expenditures across vendors, geographies, departments, and employees, broken out from overall lodging charges, which include:
– room charges, separated from applicable taxes
– multiple food and beverage categories, including hotel restaurant and room service charges
– business services, e.g. faxing, computer services, photocopying
– parking and ground transportation
American Express also offers a Room Rate Analysis Report providing data on room rates, including the average, minimum, maximum, and most frequently booked room rate information for properties and cities. Companies can use this information for supplier and cardmember compliance management.
The complimentary Hotel Folio program encompasses a data file that may be automatically fed into expense management systems and various reports, which are housed online at the American Express e-servicing site, American Express @ Work.
Varian Uncovers Savings Using Hotel Folio
Varian Medical Systems is the world’s leading manufacturer of medical devices and software for treating cancer and other medical conditions. With 4,400 employees and 1,500 travelers, Varian Medical Systems spends $33 million annually on T&E expenses and processes 35,000 expense reports each year.
Since 2006, Varian employees have used Hotel Folio to pare an estimated average of 10 minutes from individual expense reporting tasks. American Express Card data feeds of hotel folio charges and other business travel expense categories have also helped Varian keep a lid on expense-processing costs despite triple-volume growth in submissions.
“We turned to Hotel Folio because it saves us valuable time when trying to wrap our arms around travel expenditures,” said Doug Burns, Global Travel Manager, Varian Medical Systems. “Integrating Hotel Folio has helped reduce the time needed to prepare each expense report – time that is now used for more mission-critical jobs. And because the reports are so detailed, we can also cut down on excess spending and find new opportunities to save.”
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.
