CWT expands central payment solution in China to cover hotel bookings

Global travel management agency CWT’s customers in China can now book, pay, and reconcile travel expenses for flights, hotels, and rail tickets from a central account, which the agency claims will improve travel policy compliance, and save time and effort on expense reconciliation The new end-to-end central payment solution for China was developed in partnership with corporate payments specialist AirPlus, and is integrated into the myCWT platform. It works for both self-service bookings made using the myCWT web and mobile apps, and for travel counsellor-assisted bookings. It also covers all types of hotel content including CWT business rates and client negotiated rates, in addition to non-GDS content sourced via aggregators and CWT’s direct API connections with hotels. When a traveller books a hotel, their company’s payment information is captured at the time of booking to cover the room rate and deposit. The traveller doesn’t need to provide a credit card at check-in, make any payment at check-out, or keep track of invoices from their stay to get reimbursed by their company. The company receives a consolidated monthly statement for all their travellers’ bookings, with a single, itemised invoice that facilitates easy VAT reclaim and expense management. “This new solution will address several major pain-points for our customers,” said Albert Zhong (pictured), general manager, China, CWT. “The adoption of corporate credit cards and virtual cards in China is relatively low compared to many other markets around the world. Business travellers here usually first pay for travel expenses out of their own pocket, and then submit tax invoices for all these expenses to get reimbursed. A central payments solution not only creates a much better experience for travellers.” CWT says an energy company and a company from the life sciences sector have become the first customers to sign up to use central payments for their hotel bookings and says that, in the three months since making the switch, they have already seen their hotel attachment rates improve by 50-60 percentage points, while usage of their corporate negotiated hotel rates has climbed by around 20 percentage points.