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Travel buyer Lin Burgess of Xchanging voices
her frustrations with sloppy hoteliers

MY BIGGEST bug bear is correct hotel invoicing when payment is made by the guest on departure. Hotels give me a corporate rate but they don’t follow through and give me a corporate invoice.
When the confirmation comes through from our agency it clearly requests that the legal entity of the company that the invoice must be made to be included. This is in order for the client to be able to reclaim the VAT element of the hotel bill. We have worked with our HBA to alter these confirmation forms and highlight in bold our requirements in a bid to try and eradicate the problem. It clearly states that it is the guests’ responsibility that they obtain a valid VAT invoice quoting the company name and address.
Invariably, the invoice is made out to the address the guest gives at check-in (often their home address), especially if the confirmation goes via a central process. If it went to an individual property buyers would stand a better chance. Loyalty cards with home addresses can also override the company's details.

If the hotel takes details of the name of the guest, the dates of stay and the corporate rate to apply, then why are they not interested in ensuring that the invoice address is correct to enable the client to reclaim the VAT? For big corporates where a corporate card is used it is a big problem.

I have been campaigning about this for many years now. The larger hotels often do not have a robust system in place to ensure the correct corporate name and address is put onto the invoice (unless you are a frequent guest and have a hotel profile) and generally do not seem interested in doing much to assist.

The hotels all listen but they don’t do anything about it. No one hotel chain is better at this than another. They say, ‘We will do our best and we’re sure it happens’, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t help that staff retention at hotels is low so you might educate some check-in staff but they soon move on. London hotels are major offenders. We undertook an audit with one London hotel we use and that hotel now works perfectly.

The relationship between hotel and buyer could be strengthened if they sorted it out and made sure the invoice was sent to the client company but it falls into a black hole most of the time.
Currently, this situation puts the onus on the traveller to check the invoice is made out correctly and they can’t be bothered or they are usually in a hurry in the morning and don’t have time to wait and have it changed.

Obviously I am tarring everybody with the same brush but I have yet to find one chain where correct invoicing is consistent. With VAT going up to 20 per cent and corporates with multimillion pound hotel spends, it is a nonsense that this is not a priority.

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