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I’ve recently moved jobs and my new company use SAP Concur for booking corporate travel.
During the booking process, I can enter my IHG rewards number and this booking shows within my IHG account. However, I fail to get any points for the stays as they track as ‘non qualifying – online travel agency reservation’.
Can anyone provide any help or guidance please?
I’ve never had any issues with previous corporate travel booking websites.
Most agent rates are ineligible for points earning/benefits.
I’ve not used Concur for years, but I’d not go so far as to say most agent rates are ineligible. Some certainly are, and it used to be the case if you squinted at the small print when booking, combined with experience of what paid out and what didn’t, you could try and avoid those that would never pay. However, I’ve not booked through Concur in years, and things might have changed. I also basically only used it for one town outside London, and one area of London, which helped whittle down the candidates.
Remember, it’s not in the interests of chains to not provide benefits to regular travellers. That’s why travel loyalty programmes exist.
With my previous employer I always had to use Concur and got points with all the major hotel chains, including IHG. I think it depends who is the travel agency behind, in my case it was Amex who was booking everything; I guess other travel agencies could be behind Concur.
With my previous employer I always had to use Concur and got points with all the major hotel chains, including IHG. I think it depends who is the travel agency behind, in my case it was Amex who was booking everything; I guess other travel agencies could be behind Concur.
Some major employers also have negotiated rates with hotels that their staff most regularly use. So it’s booked by exactly the same travel agent process, but is eligible for points.
If you have access to PAW and it has a travel tab, you might see some hotels marked as “Corporate Exclusive” with a negotiated tariff and benefits available to staff.
A hotel near me has an entire wing block booked by a major employer, rooms only released 24 hours beforehand for the general “pot” if they aren’t going to be used.
As a Travel Buyer in the past, I used to negotiate HOTAC rates with hotels where they didn’t payout points. Decent saving at the time but the current me hates the old me 🙂
As a Travel Buyer in the past, I used to negotiate HOTAC rates with hotels where they didn’t payout points. Decent saving at the time but the current me hates the old me 🙂
Traitor.
Depends on the underlying travel agent. The corporate rates I use always post with IHG as points earning. One HIX even gives two welcome drinks to any staff who IHG One
We use Concur. The important thing is where Concur are sourcing your booking. Some of our hotels are booked using Concur through the hotel chains directly, for which I get points, and some are booked via Concur using Booking.com, for which I wouldn’t get points. It’s up to the companies signed up to Concur to agree with them which booking channels they use – it’s not an ‘all Concur’ thing and specific to your company’s agreement with Concur.
You need to check the underlying booking agent, as gtelelz and Super Secret Stuff said. You should be able to identify which hotels are booked by which underlying agent but it sounds like the IHG hotel you’re using isn’t one of the direct bookings.
As a Travel Buyer in the past, I used to negotiate HOTAC rates with hotels where they didn’t payout points. Decent saving at the time but the current me hates the old me 🙂
Well at least you’ve seen the error of your ways. I used to discourage companies that I worked for from offering “perks” such as corporate credit cards or corporate booking agencies, preferring to use my own BAPP card to book my own hotels and travel expenses and claim off the company. Got a lot of extra Avios and hotel points that way plus ensured I’d be on the right flights that I wanted not the red-eye departure at godawful o’clock.
Our IHG corporate negotiated rates (booked via SAP Concur) do not award points, the only chain that we appear to have such an arrangement with so I avoid those where possible!!
I rejoined this employer after a couple of years and unfortunately they used the COVID downtime to tighten up the travel procedures, they’re a lot tighter on using the corporate booking portal for hotels, using your company Amex for all expenses (no MRs) etc than they used to be. Used to earn plenty of points paying out of pocket
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