2

Do you know of a website or travel agent like Booking.com or Airbnb that allows you to book a hotel stay or homestay and split the payment between multiple people, each receiving their own invoice for the full duration of the stay? For example, if you book a stay for 3 nights and two people each pay half of the amount for each night, they each get an invoice for the number of nights but for half of the total cost.

This is because I am traveling for work to a conference and would like to share a room/rental with someone from a different employer to save money. Both employers are willing to reimburse up to a certain amount, but require each employee to have an individual invoice and payment. I am surprised that I couldn't find a website that offers this option.

Possible solutions found so far:

Improve this question
4
  • 1
    In general, for hotels, when you have a flexible rate with no payment upfront, it will be the hotel charging cards and doing the invoices, not the booking engine (it’s often, but not always, different for discounted fares paid in advance). Find the hotel and room you want, and contact the hotel to ask them. In some cases you may also book directly with the hotel at the same price, but sometimes the better rates are only available through Booking.com for complex reasons.
    – jcaron
    Jan 20 at 9:57
  • @jcaron: this makes sense, thanks! but do you know if it is possible to search for accommodation at hotels which will specifically charge onsite and not upfront?
    – a3nm
    Jan 20 at 10:35
  • 2
    @a3nn Booking does, just need to check the pay later option
    – Nicolas Formichella
    Jan 20 at 11:03
  • On ABNB, I think "payments" is offered as a feature that hosts can turn on. But collecting payments in the way you want, from different parties, probably not offered at all.
    – user27701
    Jan 20 at 21:09

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
6

Best you can do is to pick a few hotels that seem viable, call them and ask.

Almost all hotels will require a single credit card to secure the booking at reservation and to be presented at check-in for guaranteeing the room and incidental charges. Many hotels will put a deposit on the card as well (depends mostly on the country).

At check-out, they may be willing to run three different cards to pay the bill and produce three different receipts. Ask upfront.

That doesn't change the fact though, that generally there is a single point of responsibility during the stay. There has to be a single card that gets charged in case the guest runs off, makes a mess of the room or raids the mini-bar.

Consider making a private arrangements with your potential room mates if someone can front the money. Each traveler can them submit a copy of the hotel bill and a receipt for a 3rd of the bill with a note how this was arranged. Check with your expense department(s) first.

Improve this answer
1
  • 2
    It’s important to note that there will usually be an authorisation request on the card at check-in, usually for the full amount + a bit more for incidentals. This can then be cancelled or adjusted for the final amount (one’s share of the total), but the card used must still be able to accept that charge even if it’s not actually debited (just “blocked” temporarily until the actual charge).
    – jcaron
    Jan 20 at 12:15
5

I used to travel a lot with coworkers and we had the same problem: our company requested one invoice (and payment) per person, to be reimbursed later.

Usually it went smoothly with the following schema, using Booking.com:

  • One person books the room without paying in advance. They had to enter they card number but no amount was actually paid nor blocked. Supplying credit card info is usually enough to secure the reservation, for the hotel can charge it later.

  • At checkout, we split the bill and each of us paid for their quota and received a different invoice.

Of course this prevented the choice of the cheapest rates (those with pay-in-advance-no-refund option), but since it was a business trip, we could live with it.

We never used AirBnB though.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .