HRS and SAP Concur Sign Strategic 5-Year Deal

HRS, a corporate lodging platform, announced the signing of a five-year extension of its SAP Concur partnership. SAP Concur provides integrated travel, expense, and invoice management solutions. The agreement builds off a groundbreaking decade of HRS delivering managed travel savings to corporations via three primary elements: continuously innovative services, superior payment and invoice reconciliation tools, and broad but targeted content options that meet the evolving requirements of modern hotel programs.

Data-Driven Technology Services via a Unique Platform

HRS’ Lodging-as-a-Service platform – available to SAP Concur clients via desktop or mobile devices – delivers savings while adding efficiencies that drive traveler satisfaction.

Highlights include:

• The provision of a more streamlined, multi-source hotel booking option for corporations that includes HRS’ patented Rate Filter technology, which eliminates squatter and other erroneous rates. These elements contribute to increased use of correct, negotiated rates at preferred hotels.
• Implementation of HRS’ AI-powered Recommendation Engine – in conjunction with a client’s policy and configuration – that helped corporations record an increase of 76 percent in bookings from top 10 search results. This drove significant gains in use of preferred properties. Use of this technology also reduced user search and shopping time by 50 percent.
• HRS’ Rebooking solution, which leverages automation to seek out post initial-booking rate savings from all hotel content sources – not just the GDS. This automated service finds lower rates and rebooks the traveler without any manual intermediary intervention.
• Universal enablement of hotel loyalty programs for travelers, a critical item that notably enhances compliance for North American-centric programs.
• Unrivaled efficiency gains for corporations via HRS’ proprietary end-to-end solutions – from procurement and booking to payment and invoice collection – without the data friction that typically results from disparate solutions being patched together.

Superior Invoice Reconciliation and Automated Payment

One ramification of COVID-19 – the need for touchless business travel experiences – is increasing interest in HRS’ pioneering hotel reconciliation and payment technologies, used today in China and Asia-Pacific, across Europe and in the Americas.

Managed hotel programs are particularly interested in centralized payment and use of virtual credit cards, keeping travelers out of lines in hotel lobbies while reducing compliance risks and fraud. HRS has enabled the global acceptance of virtual credit card technology and records an unmatched 95 percent acceptance rate with hotels worldwide.

Hotel programs have also historically been plagued by challenges with invoice reconciliation, with erroneous data resulting in lost savings and incomplete reporting. HRS has invested heavily in solutions that solve this issue with superior automation and efficiency via its proprietary API. This technology also has the flexibility to easily connect with a company‘s expense, value added tax (VAT) reclaim and accounting systems.

Delivering the Right Content from the Widest Range of Sources

HRS provides a wide variety of global content to managed hotel programs. Sources for business-grade hotels suitable for corporate travelers include:

• Direct connects with global hotel chains
• HRS’ proprietary consortia programs
• Connections with all prominent global distribution systems
• Interfaces with leading global and local online travel agencies (OTAs), such as Ctrip and Expedia

HRS‘ unrivaled continuous hotel procurement service, used by 35 percent of the global Fortune 500, maximizes each company’s lodging data and HRS‘ unmatched local benchmark data to secure compelling pricing, flexible terms and transparent reporting. Now expanding beyond rates, HRS content concisely displays information in the booking path that helps assure travelers that a property has implemented enhanced hygiene practices in reaction to the Coronavirus pandemic. As part of this strategic partnership, Concur® Travel is one of the first to accommodate HRS’ new Clean & Safe Protocol, offering simple language and clear indication of hotel cleanliness for mutual customers.

“Our proprietary Lodging-as-a-Service platform is the leading end-to-end solution for corporate lodging today,” said Tobias Ragge, CEO of HRS. “We’re combining tremendous process efficiencies and direct cost savings with seamless technology that drives traveler satisfaction – all enhanced to support the revised Duty-of-Care guidelines companies have implemented in the wake of COVID-19.”