Travel and Expense |
Case Studies | International SOS
International SOS
How Could Booking Hotels in an Emergency be Made Easier? - That’s the Question International SOS was Asking.
Barclaycard’s Hotel Tracker Provided the Answer.
Task
When you’re responsible for giving emergency medical and security assistance to people overseas, reacting fast is crucial.
One of the important tasks is making sure relatives of the patient can stay somewhere close to where treatment is being
provided. And that often means making last-minute hotel bookings.
The booking system that International SOS was using needed some updating. Their clients’ hotel room costs were being
charged to the company credit card. Chasing the invoices of these room costs was proving difficult, and any that weren’t
settled within six months were being paid by International SOS. Patrick Kuziw, Travel Manager, International SOS explains
that, ‘our old system was quite a manual, time-consuming process. One of the biggest issues was collecting the invoices
after the guests had checked out of hotels.’
Solution
In March 2009, Hotel Tracker was recommended to International SOS. Hotel Tracker is Barclaycard’s virtual based solution
developed in partnership with Conferma.
Hotel Tracker is a virtual card solution that’s easy to set up and can be used by multiple Travel Management Companies
(TMCs)/booking agents, and hotels that accept Visa payments. It assigns a unique card number to each hotel booking and
stores all the traveller’s details and costs under this number. So it’s easy to see who the guest was, where and when
they stayed and how much they were charged.
There’s also an automatic invoice-chasing facility and the solution provides an enhanced and electronic monthly statement
that helps reconciliation. No sign-off is required, less paperwork is involved, and the chances of the card being misused
are greatly reduced.
Results
International SOS has found using the system makes the hotel booking process more efficient than ever.
With many of their clients requiring three hotel quotes, previously co-ordinators needed to call several hotels.
Our tracker tool automatically finds at least five hotels for the client to choose from, together with costs.
So a job that once took an hour now takes 5–10 minutes. And the payment process is now far more secure as there’s no
longer any need to take the risk of faxing or emailing a copy of a credit card to various hotels.
Our system uses a unique code that only the hotel can view, and the database constantly monitors charges to the card.
Conclusion
Hotel Tracker has helped International SOS make significant savings by cutting the time and the number of people it
takes to manage the whole hotel booking process. The management information which the business now receives is more
detailed and accurate too. Data is provided for all bookings, including long stays in serviced apartments.
And the client has peace of mind, knowing that it’s very difficult for the card to be used fraudulently.
International SOS continues to benefit from Hotel Tracker and the support services that come with it.
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