Hi Kelsey,
The only part of this that I have good input for is incoming guests. We have several local hotels that we have set up direct-bill agreements with. Reservations come through our Shared Administrative Services department to ensure that we have the correct billing information before the reservation is even made. It has worked beautifully for us! The guests only have to put a card on file for incidentals or room charges.

Thanks,
Amanda

We have partnered with four local hotels adjacent to our campus and have made an invoicing agreement with each of them. No credit card is needed at the hotel, only the room charges are invoiced to our college the guest needs to provide a card for incidentals. At the end of the guest's stay, the college department is directly invoiced for their guest and the department processed the invoice as normal in Workday.

Thank you so much, Amanda and David! Would either of you happen to know how many guest stays (monthly or annually) are handled in your respective systems? How quickly is payment sent to your partner hotels?
Much appreciated!

I would say we have between 25-30 guests per month, mostly with our School of Music!

Good Morning,

This is a common issue for us with student and guest travelers. We are currently piloting a declining balance card program that allows us to load funds for single use events and this has worked rather well for both domestic and international lodging accommodations (car rentals too). We also have partnerships with local hotels for direct billing.

We use our agency held lodge card for 3rd party authorizations, however, it's common that a hotel won't accept these or like you mentioned, the charges come into Concur as orphaned transactions. We created an orphaned card charge spreadsheet and have a staff person who loads the transactions daily and uses reporting to help identify and move the charges to the appropriate traveler profile. We also shared this spreadsheet with all staff who coordinate or assist with the expense reporting process so they know to look there and identify any of their travelers transactions to be moved. It's a big lift but we found that if we don't give it constant attention, the process of identification can become nearly impossible if we can't align transactions with reporting or obtain receipts from the vendor to help aid us in identifying the transaction.

Conferma Pay is the most robust hotel ghost card solution available in the market. They have been a SCTEM Sponsor. Not all Hotels accept Ghost Card for payment.

For the LA Jolla area I did rate loading for 10 area Hotels for a client and they can coordinate direct billing on Concur bookings for you.

Local hotels are already working with several of your departments already. Reach out to the property Director of Sales or the properties Business Travel Sales Manager. In La Jolla the Marriott has a regional contact.

The Credit Card Authorization Form: Is the standard method to secure prepayment for Guests or Students. It can be set up for Room & Tax, Room & Tax & Incidentals.
Simply call the front desk and ask to have the form sent or keep copies on file.

Thank you, Amanda! I'm the one doing all of the hotel charge matching process and since 100% of them are oprhans, it's a massive lift for me. I also have an Excel spreadsheet for tracking but it's a disaster.

Thank you, Joe! We already have robust local partnerships that have been in place for 10+ years. Our local hotel properties are super to work with and the issue is on our end. We will not invoice or direct bill for this. We're looking for a card product solution and doing a credit card auth for every visitor is not feasible. We've been looking into Conferma for years but the service fee associated has been prohibitive.

We do have temporary virtual cards but the traveler does not usually have that card number at time of booking so it's not ideal.

There's something out there, I know it! When we find it we'll be sure to share.