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Case Studies | Ian Allan Travel
Ian Allan Travel
Conferma Hotel Tracker Delivers Hotel Booking, Payment and Reconciliation Efficiencies
Ian Allan is a long-established independent UK travel management company with its head office in Shepperton and branches
in Bracknell and Bristol. As a leading independent travel management company (TMC) ranked within the top 25 travel
management companies in the UK, Ian Allan operates specialist departments in corporate, charity and academic travel,
groups/special events, leisure and aviation tours.
Ian Allan's Director of Operations and Deputy Managing Director is Pat O'Neill. He says, "We had been looking at ways
of streamlining the admin process around hotel billbacks and credit card reconciliations." In late 2008 Ian Allan started
to implement Conferma's Hotel Booker and Hotel Tracker products.
Pat continues, "Historically there was no channel for hotels. Nothing was really controlled satisfactorily. We would
chase hotels for copies of invoices, try to reconcile credit cards, chase and track commissions.
"There was the challenge of how to allocate commissions back to clients in line with their agreements. This was really
labour intensive and had to allow for a degree of assumption on a percentage basis rather than on a finite basis.
The whole process was never cost effective."
Hotel Tracker allows for the streamlining of settlement and improves the payment process between the corporate, agent
and hotels. 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.
Ian Allan gradually rolled out Hotel Booker branch by branch and when every branch was happy, it then rolled out
Hotel Tracker for use by its corporate clients.
"Previously there were difficulties, managing hotel rates, corporate rates and preparing MI to incorporate the number
of bed nights and chain usage. Conferma gives us the tool to go forward with our hotel programme," says Pat.
The Conferma tool sits on the Ian Allan GDS and interfaces seamlessly from the front to the back office, and has the
ability then to generate management information.
"You get full MI, commission tracking and the ability to allocate commissions accurately," says Pat.
"I can see how many hotels, say, the Bristol office is booking, or how much business is going to a particular chain or
brand," he continues.
Pat says that staff time is saved in many ways as, for instance, Conferma's seamless connection allows it to do such
things as automatically fax a hotel for an invoice. The tool can be customised to each corporate client and either
corporate rates or Ian Allan rates can be loaded.
When travellers make use of their own cards the Conferma virtual card can still be used as a guarantee card to secure
the booking. The traveller can still pay on departure and then the product is used as a booking and reconciliation tool
rather than as a payment tool.
Pat believes there will be even more adoption of the product. "We do the vast majority of our hotel bookings through
Tracker and corporate clients are continuing to show interest in the product. We expect the utilisation by corporate
clients to increase over the coming months," he says.
Hotel Tracker gives organisations the knowledge that they can reconcile billings very easily, ultimately saving time
and money.
For Ian Allan, the internal benefit has been in the saving of time in both admin and finance departments. There is one
less person working on reconciling hotel transactions.
As Pat says, "The cost of the transaction fee has been far outweighed by the time savings and increased efficiency."
About Hotel Tracker
Conferma's Hotel Tracker uses a virtual credit card to automate the hotel booking, payment and reconciliation process.
Hotel Tracker gives hotels immediate payment on guest departure while agencies benefit from extended payment terms.
The booked and billed data is then automatically matched to provide a detailed statement in conjunction with Barclaycard
Commercial. Automatic matching removes time-consuming manual processes and so increases productivity and accuracy and
significantly reduces admin time.
Conferma's Hotel Tracker is part of an integrated suite of hotel booking and payment products.
For further information call 0844 815 3601 or email enquiries@conferma.com.