Booking Hotels for Non-Employees? Here’s What You Need to Know

Guest post with contributions by our own Liz Gnat – Account Manager

If your company is actively recruiting employees from beyond your region, booking flights and hotel rooms for non-employees is a fairly common occurrence. It’s in the exchange of money where the situation can get complicated and go sideways.First impressions matter, and you will want to avoid an unsatisfactory experience with a potential candidate during their first encounter with your organization. If you’re interviewing recent college graduates, the likelihood of them not possessing credit cards also comes into play.

To that end, you will want to create an established reimbursement policy document available as a downloadable PDF that you can share with the non-employee via an email. Here are the three tips we routinely provide to our corporate clients for booking non-employee hotels:

1. If the non-employee insists upon using their own credit card to pay for the room (because they want to earn credit card points, for example) then your company needs to inform them of your policy to reimburse them.
2. If the non-employee doesn’t have a credit card to use, your company can prepay the hotel on behalf of the non-employee. To do so, your company will need to fill out a credit card authorization form with the hotel so the non-employee is not responsible for the payment upon their check out. On the form, you decide if your policy is that only room and tax are going to be paid, or if incidentals will be included.
3. When you book an advanced purchase, full-payment type rate, the hotel will allow you to use your company’s credit card so that the non-employee is not responsible for payment. The non-employee will be asked for a credit card for incidentals, unless you’ve made the other pre-authorization arrangements.

If you have any questions about best practices for booking airfare or hotels for non-employees, please feel free to contact your Amtrav representative at 1-800-795-8371.

Written by: Denise Dorman