A Week with Corporate Travel Executives & HRS Leadership on the California Coast

For many corporates, the meetings category is still a tangle of fragmented workflows, missed reclaim opportunities, and uncontrolled spend. And the root cause? It’s not a lack of tools. It’s the lack of orchestration between them.

That was the core insight of our recent expert session with: 

• Kari Wendel, VP Meeting Solutions Americas, HRS 
• Stuart Bartholomew, Strategic Sourcing Manager, ITW 
• Joe Healy, Chief Growth Officer, Fintua (formerly Taxback International) 
• Joe Gabrielle, Global Lead Buyer, Events Procurement, Sanofi 

The conversation made one thing clear: for organizations serious about controlling meetings spend and driving compliance, it’s time to rethink how meetings, payments, and data interact.

The payment process is broken — and buyers know it

Despite strategic sourcing and compliance efforts, many teams still rely on manual processes, disconnected systems, and after-the-fact reconciliation.

Even in a mature program, we see spend falling through the cracks. Payments are often disconnected from booking workflows — and that creates downstream issues for compliance and reclaim.
Joe Gabrielle
Chief Growth Officer, Fintua (formerly Taxback International)

Meetings are inherently complex. Without the right controls, you end up with rogue spend, VAT leakage, and friction between procurement and end users.
Stuart Bartholomew
Strategic Sourcing Manager, ITW

The consensus: organizations lack visibility into what’s actually happening across the lifecycle of a meeting — from sourcing to settlement.

What's changing: Automation and strategic alignment 

But progress is underway. Kari Wendel outlined the emerging solution: a streamlined ecosystem where booking, payment, and compliance are not separate functions, but one continuous process.

“We’re moving from fragmented systems to unified workflows,” said Wendel. “That’s how you get control. That’s how you drive both user satisfaction and program performance.”
Kari Wendel
VP Meeting Solutions Americas, HRS

added perspective from the payments and tax side: “You need to capture the right data at the right time. And the only way to do that is by embedding payment and compliance logic directly into the meetings process — not layering it on after.”
Joe Healy
Chief Growth Officer, Fintua (formerly Taxback International)

What leaders are doing differently

Forward-thinking companies aren’t waiting for perfection. They’re:

→ Mapping the full lifecycle of meetings workflows — from request to reconciliation
→ Automating VAT reclaim based on structured data capture
→ Aligning procurement, finance, and event teams around shared KPIs
→ Embedding payments earlier in the process to reduce risk and increase control
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As Kari Wendel summarized: “It’s not about adding more tools. It’s about bringing the right people and processes together — and simplifying where it counts.”

What this means for your program — and where Connect fits in

Meetings will never be simple. But they can be streamlined.
HRS Connect is the platform designed to enable exactly this kind of orchestration — not only for lodging, but also for meetings, payments, and compliance.

Connect unifies fragmented processes into one integrated workflow.
It embeds reclaim logic, simplifies reconciliation, and connects sourcing with settlement — in real time.
If your meetings program still relies on spreadsheets, email approvals, or disconnected payment systems, now is the moment to step back and rethink.

Start with the full webinar recording — and see how leaders across industries are tackling these challenges.

Explore integrated meetings + payment solutions with HRS and Fintua. Learn More

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