CWT’s customers in China can now book, pay, and reconcile travel expenses for flights, hotels, and rail tickets from a central account. 

• Central payments can help increase traveler satisfaction, improve travel policy compliance, and save time and effort on expense reconciliation.

CWT has introduced a new end-to-end central payment solution for hotel bookings in China. Developed in partnership with corporate payments specialist AirPlus, the solution is integrated into the myCWT platform.

It works for both self-service bookings made using the myCWT web and mobile apps, and for travel counselor-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 traveler books a hotel, their company’s payment information is captured at the time of booking to cover the room rate and deposit. The traveler 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 travelers’ bookings, with a single, itemized invoice that facilitates easy VAT reclaim and expense management. 

"This new solution will address several major pain-points for our customers," said Albert Zhong, 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 travelers 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 travelers, it can also help companies gain greater control over their spend, increase policy compliance, improve hotel attachment rates, reduce the risk of fraudulent transactions, and streamline invoice reconciliation."

CWT already offers central payments for air and rail bookings in China, and these have been widely adopted by its customers. An energy company and another company from the life sciences sector have become the first customers that have signed up to use central payments for their hotel bookings.

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.