To: Campus Unit Finance Leads, University Business Managers
From: Rebecca Spanos, Travel and Payment Card Services Manager
Please share this information with all Concur users in your Department/Unit.
Effective Jan. 9, 2023, several updates have been made in Concur Travel to the booking process for hotels to improve the user experience.
First, we removed the Hotel per diem locations page. This page listed the federal meal and lodging per diem rates that did not pertain to all travelers. When you now search for hotel options in Concur, you are taken directly to the search results without having to click through this informational page.
Second, we removed government hotel rates from the hotel search results. As a reminder, University travelers do not qualify for the use of government hotel rates for most University travel. Travel that is supported by federal funds may qualify for the use of these rates, but hotels will typically require backup documentation be presented at check-in to validate the traveler’s eligibility. If you do qualify for the use of these rates, there are two options to book:
- Contact the agent team at World Travel, Inc. by phone at 1-877-602-4950 or via email at uncch_travel@worldtravelinc.com and request the government hotel rates.
- In the Travel Preferences section of your Concur Profile, check the box for Government rates. This will allow the government rates to be shown when searching in Concur Travel.
In addition to these updates, we wanted to highlight a unique feature of booking your hotel stays through Concur Travel/World Travel, Inc. Once your reservation has been made, a Hotel Shopping Bot powered by tripBAM will re-shop your reservation monitoring for the room rate to go down. If it does, the bot will automatically re-book your reservation at that lower rate and then continue to re-shop your reservation up until your date of arrival. Your hotel reservation could be re-booked numerous times after your initial reservation providing significant savings over the original room rate selected.
As a reminder, employees are strongly encouraged to book their hotel through Concur Travel/World Travel, Inc. when they are not able to take advantage of a conference rate or negotiated rate.