The new agreement offers travel agencies a total solution for the collection, recovery and reconciliation of hotel commissions. Travel agencies that sign up with Net Trans through Abacus can expect more commissions collected, faster payment cycles and thorough reporting of its hotel fee collections status.

Brett Henry (left), vice president marketing, Abacus International, said, “Collecting commissions from hotel bookings can be a problem for travel agencies. The follow up process can be tedious and in some cases protracted.

“By partnering Net Trans, we help our travel agencies out-source this task to a professional company with the expertise and market knowledge to methodically follow up with the hotels. With this system in place, travel agencies have the peace-of-mind to devote their time and energy on providing superior travel experiences to their customers and boosting their bottom line.”

According to Stuart Wines, director of sales for Net Trans Services AS, Net Trans has found that agents are not paid what they are owed in commission up to 50% of the time.

“Every travel agent has at some point in time encountered problems in collecting hotel commission. Net Trans will step in to relieve the travel agencies of this bothersome task. What’s more, travel agencies can expect increased commission, earlier payment and comprehensive reporting that outlines the status of all current, expected and outstanding hotel commissions owed to the travel agencies. Based on our experience, on average, payment time can be halved,” added Wines.

In addition, Net Trans will present a consolidated monthly payment to the travel agencies in a currency of its choice (option of eight currencies) removing the resource consuming and pain-staking task of monitoring receivables, reconciliation of payments against bookings, banking and book keeping multiple cheques of small amounts and chasing hotels for outstanding commissions.

Travel agents will also receive an updated and accurate record of the overall revenue generated from individual hotels and the commissions anticipated, paid and overdue, right down to the payment mode. From the records, travel agencies will be able to identify which hotels pay the best commission and which hotels are slower in processing their payments. This report can be accessed online 24/7 at the travel agencies’ convenience.

“Given the challenging climate where airline commissions are whittling away, hotel commissions become increasingly critical to the travel agencies’ bottom line. Rather than forgo the hard-earned revenue, travel agencies just need to be smarter in their collection process,” said Wines.

In its 2010 annual survey, Net Trans found that hotel commission was among the top three sources of revenue for 87% of the 225 respondents. This was more than any other source. Next highest was customer fees (69%), followed by airline commission/kickbacks (63%) and GDS fees (41%). The survey was carried out among Net Trans agency customers mainly in Europe and Asia.

Featured image credit (Businessmen shake hands with green land background): Ockra/iStock