Possible solution aired at meeting with hotels
Billbacks are an international problem, not purely a British one, John Williams, general manager of the UK Guild of Travel Management Companies (GTMC) said today (May 27).
He was speaking at a meeting in London called by the Guild with hotel chains to try and find a solution to what he said is an "accelerating problems.
More than 50 people attended the meeting including executives from hotels, TMCs, GDSs, card companies and hotel associations.
Mr William said a billback was "any hotel charge which is being paid by the TMC on behalf of the client."
But problems were arising because the credit card used for the bookings belonged to the TMC, not the traveller faced with the bill.
This often forced travellers to pay the bill with their own cards but not all were able to do this which can lead to "messy situations," Mr Williams said.
He said the main problem seemed to be one of communication.
The easiest way for a TMC to book a hotel room for a client was through a GDS.
But Mr Williams said that not all information regarding the booking was going through the GDS to the hotel, Mr Williams said.
This required the TMC to fax the hotel with the missing information but hotels did not always unite the various strands of information.
"This is causing confusion and sometimes distress when the client is asked to pay on departure for items that should be paid by the TMC.
"Even when the details do get tied up there are many instances where the TMC does not receive a detailed invoice from the hotel to substantiate the charge to the client or to reclaim VAT," he said.
But two possible solutions were put forward at the meeting, one short term, the other longer term.
"The quicker fix is persuading more and more hotels across the world to accept the Barclaycard Tracker Card and the Conferma software which works with the card," he said.
This would enable hotels to detail all information to TMCs to reconcile payments.
Bur Mr Williams said that with hotels which had this system, it worked well but even within chains, some hotels adopted it and others did not.
The longer term solution was a properly managed end to end system where all information sent by the TMC to the GDS was passed onto the hotels' systems.
Mr Williams said this would provide a seamless service.
But GDS are unwilling to invest to provide this service until hotels get their own systems right.
He said the GTMC would now "digest" the information gathered at the meeting and its hotel working party would discuss the issue at its next meeting on June 15.
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