Case Study: Portman Travel

Barclaycard Business Hotel Tracker - the smarter way to pay

Portman Travel is the largest privately-owned business Travel Management Company (TMC) in the UK. Founded in 1959, Portman employs approximately 500 operational staff at over 25 locations across the UK. The company continues to grow within the market place and has recently made acquisitions to consolidate its position in the UK as well as expanding into continental Europe and Ireland.

Portman has witnessed impressive growth in the last ten years, as its corporate clients have increasingly found themselves with less time to book their own travel and turn instead to a travel company which can take care of every aspect of their business trip.

Before Hotel Tracker - cash flow was a real issue

With a growing customer base, and the customers having a growing need to outsource the settlement of bills at a wide range of properties, Portman Travel began to experience increasing difficulties with the payment mechanism, receipt and reconciliation of billings on behalf of those customers.

Gill Goodship, Head of Customer Servicing at Portman Travel comments: "When it came to funding some accommodation requirements we were using our own Barclaycard Business Corporate cards as the payment mechanism. We encountered real difficulty with the reconciliation of charges from some hotel suppliers and, having paid a hotel for a customer's accommodation, were suffering delays before being able to bill and receive payment from our customers. Those clients, of course, would have had the same issues if they had not outsourced the requirements to Portman. However, we then came across plans for the Barclaycard Business Hotel Tracker and thought it would be the answer to our problems.

"We were crying out for a system of this type. When we spent time with Barclaycard and Conferma we knew this system would offer us everything we wanted and more."

Barclaycard Business Hotel Tracker was developed in partnership with Conferma Ltd, a specialist provider of corporate hotel bookings, so that businesses, agents, travellers and hotels could benefit from a quick and easy settlement of hotel bills. Hotel Tracker gives each hotel booking a unique reference number that is matched against the payment. Barclaycard Business takes responsibility for hotel payments which are then charged to the Barclaycard Business Hotel Tracker account upon departure. Hotel Tracker uses a booking and settlement platform to track all payments, provide data consolidation and issue prompt and accurate monthly transaction reports.

Easy Reconciliation

Hotel Tracker allows for the streamlining of settlement and improves the payment process between the corporate, agent and hotels. This saves time and money, as well as making it easier to enforce booking policies through the provision of accurate and timely data.

The process ensures that the reconciliation of the booking data and billing data is easier to manage, making the whole process significantly more efficient and ensuring that customers can be billed in an accurate and timely manner.

Gill Goodship adds: "Before we had Hotel Tracker, we were reliant on our employees manually logging use of our Barclaycard Business Corporate cards. This meant that it was easy for information to get lost, as it could be displaced before being input on to the system. Data input errors could also be a problem, and this meant it often took hours to find bookings on the system."

Prior to Hotel Tracker, Portman Travel had difficulty reconciling some items, and it was an incredibly time consuming and lengthy exercise. At one point four team members were responsible for reconciling invoices for the hotels division of the business alone. Portman was about to introduce a large extra fee to clients who need this service. A large part of this extra fee can now be avoided when the client signs up to Hotel Tracker with Portman.

Increased Security

Hotel Tracker provides additional information, so that Portman Travel now has the name of a guest, all of their itinerary and details in one place. It also offers access to valuable electronic data, including VAT information and a breakdown of the invoice.

Gill Goodship comments: "Hotel Tracker has given us increased security. There is a unique card number for every reservation set up on the Barclaycard Business system, and our staff are no longer even aware of the credit card number. This means that we can easily track back to the billing associated with every transaction."

Great Customer Service

Hotel Tracker cuts down on time consuming manual processes by automating the matching of the travellers booking with the Hotel Tracker payment.

Gill Goodship adds: "Hotel Tracker has been invaluable to our business since we started trialling it in December 2007. It has led to improvements in our cash flow, cost of reconciliation and meant that billings are now completed in a timely fashion.

"With staff spending less time on manual processing, they are free to spend more time helping customers to plan their journey, which ultimately has improved the service our customers are receiving."

Real Bottom Line Growth

Hotel Tracker gives organisations the knowledge that they can reconcile billings very easily, ultimately saving time and money.

Gill Goodship concludes: "Hotel Tracker has significantly reduced the whole billback process in terms of both time and cost. In addition, the impact on head count is immeasurable. Our staff are now free to concentrate on bookings, which means that our customers are happier and so is our bottom line."