EMBARGOED: Groups aim to standardize virtual payments for hotels
Wednesday, 05 Nov, 2015
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The fast growing adoption of virtual payments in business travel has been a boon for travel managers, bringing about more transparency, customization and control over travel budgets. Companies can define a whole range of controls over each one-time virtual payment assigning a monetary limit or a pre-defined time frame. There is the obvious benefit of additional fraud protection with single use virtual payments while automatic reconciliation does away with tedious paper shuffling.
While this seems like a win-win for travel managers, the same cannot be said for hotels accepting virtual payments. Using existing processing systems, hotels are often unable to differentiate between a virtual payment and a traditional credit card transaction, creating customer service issues at check-in and time consuming authorization procedures.
Two industry groups jointly want to bring the same level of transparency and convenience to the hotel front desk too. The Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association (HEDNA) and Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG) have updated their best practices guide for virtual payment card use, aimed at standardizing operational policies across the industry.
‘Virtual Payment Cards: A Handbook for Hoteliers’ provides a comprehensive overview of virtual payments and details both the benefits and challenges hotels face. It covers a range of issues including credit management, default risk, monthly invoicing procedures and reconciliation.
"Recent growth in virtual payment card usage has amplified the industry’s need for operational guidelines and a solution to the current data limitations relating to virtual payments. This joint document and development specifications for hotel booking and payment systems are an important step towards an industry standard," said David Cabreza, chairman of the HEDNA Payments Forum.
To create these guidelines HEDNA and HTNG sought input from member companies including global distribution systems (GDS), hospitality software providers, hotel chains and payment processors.
"This white paper is a great example of leading hotel associations and their members collaborating to address shared issues, enable greater efficiency and improve guest service," added David Sjolander, chief operating officer of HTNG.
TravelMole Editorial Team
Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.
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