HRS Meetings Mgmt Tech Features Breakthrough Data Visibility & Automated Invoicing

New AI Platform Reinvents Simple Meetings Management

New Meetings-as-a-Service Offering Includes Breakthrough Invoicing & Payment Technology, Giving Planners an End-to-End Process Featuring Sustainable Procurement & VAT-Reclaim

Cologne, Germany & New York, NY – 30 October, 2024 – HRS, the leading global corporate lodging and payment technology company, introduced groundbreaking simple meetings management automation today. The Meetings-as-a-Service solution features HRS’ proprietary CONNECT platform, which provides new AI-infused automation for both corporations and hotel suppliers as they strive to increase data visibility. With this solution, HRS provides corporations with unparalleled transparency and control over their meetings programs while integrating procurement, instant pricing, virtual payment and VAT reclaim in one end-to-end process. HRS will feature the new solution at stand #9 next week at the Global Business Travel Association’s Europe Conference, taking place in Copenhagen on 4-6 November.

With the escalating demand for simple meetings and 2025 sourcing activities underway, the timing of HRS’ global rollout of this solution is ideal. Just this month, Amadeus noted that 40 percent of the hotel bookings made by its clients for 2025 are tied to meetings. Among HRS’ global client base, the surge in the number of meetings booked through the third quarter is tied to a 39 percent increase in the number of meetings-related contracted room nights. Given this growing expenditure, HRS’ Meetings-as-a-Service arms procurement and travel leaders with a timely, unparalleled 360-degree view of a company’s regional or global meetings program performance.

The Challenge: Overcoming Legacy Structure & Inadequate Simple Meetings Processes

Even with recent technological advancements, far too many companies lack a single source of truth when it comes to the policies and practices tied to the sourcing, booking and payment of simple meetings. A May 2024 Business Travel News survey found that nearly half (46 percent) of planners admitted to not using a defined process for meetings procurement nor payment. Numerous studies in recent years noted companies are not capturing data across categories and segments, missing opportunities to reduce costs and enhance performance. This lack of centralized oversight and symmetrical contractual terms also increases exposure to compliance risks.

HRS’ Elevates Simple Meeting Planning and Payment via Unmatched Data Transparency

The AI-powered HRS CONNECT platform is the key element of HRS’ Meetings-as-a-Service. The solution eliminates the guesswork for procurement leaders, professional planners, and administrative assistants, regardless of their experience level. Embedded policy-defined guardrails speed decision-making and expedite approvals. Other highlights include:     

• New instant-pricing technology leverages pricing history and preferred supplier agreements to significantly reduce the time it takes to consider rate options and lock in the right combination of meeting space and room nights. This simplicity also ensures consistency for hotel partners, significantly reducing downstream correction scenarios. 
• HRS seamlessly integrates across existing corporate ecosystems, digitizing vital elements along the way. For example, the solution offers enriched transaction data via automated invoice collection and correction mechanisms. This dramatically reduces the need to manually go through piles of paper while ensuring companies only pay for what was contracted. The digitization and streamlining of successive financial processes ultimately minimizes errors and sets the stage for 100% reclaim of VAT-eligible expenses.
• Corporations gain from unmatched benchmarking capabilities, with a clear view on the average rates, terms and conditions of similar events at comparable hotels. Moreover, HRS’ Meetings-as-a-Service clients will also have access to HRS’ award-winning, ISO-certified Green Stay Initiative in early 2025, enabling the automated incorporation of sustainability data in RFP and booking exercises, including the emissions tied to use of meeting rooms and other on-site services.

Meetings-as-a-Service Already Driving Successful Outcomes for HRS Clients

As noted, the occurrence of simple meetings is on the rise since the end of the pandemic. HRS has multiple Fortune 500 corporate clients taking aggressive steps and several deployed the Meetings-as-a-Service solution even as HRS refined the technology in recent months. Some results include: 

• Cumulative cost savings of 28 percent across trials in multiple countries.  
• Planners save multiple hours of time per meeting planned.  
• Preferred terms & conditions were included in 96 percent of executed agreements with hotels.  
• HRS’ AI-powered automated invoicing capability is unmatched. Invoices processed by HRS are 98 percent accurate, far exceeding the results of other providers.   
• Corporate meetings program leaders are clearly seeking more sustainable hotel properties for their meetings. The number of Green Stay properties booked for meetings has increased 15 percent through the first three quarters of 2024 (over 2023 figures).

“The infusion of cutting-edge, AI-powered technology into the everyday management of simple corporate meetings is long overdue,” said Luca De Angelis, CEO of HRS’ Workforce and Meetings Solutions business unit. “Our Meetings-as-a-Service solution gives procurement leaders, professional planners and administrative professionals a self-service option at their 24x7 disposal, with proven platform-based technology elevating current performance as well as projection scenarios. Our existing clients are lined up to deploy this solution, and engagement from trendsetting verticals like automative, consulting and pharmaceutical/ life sciences is growing by the week. It’s the right time for this solution, as this segment requires the benefits of new automation as simple meeting volume grows across the globe.”

About HRS 

HRS is a global technology company focused on leveraging Artificial Intelligence to create fully digital lodging experiences for corporations and their travelers. The company’s platform-based solutions are reinventing end-to-end travel management and the traveler experience for transient, meetings and workforce segments for Fortune 500 companies worldwide. HRS’ award-winning Green Stay Initiative enables hotels to showcase their sustainable attributes while helping companies on their quest towards NetZero travel. HRS has an unsurpassed network of ecosystem relationships, with secure API integrations to hotel suppliers, digital payment facilitators and booking solutions. More information at www.hrs.com and on LinkedIn.

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