Originally Posted by
hotel_user
However some organisations will not accept paid receipts from employees from hotels not booked through an approved OTA or other method. It could be in this case.
It may be worth a short e mail to the hotel GM and plead your case ?
Even if the OP was required to book through a OTA, it doesn't really change the case at hand.
Hotels cannot afford to or don't want to provide status benefits if people don't book direct. If someone books a chain hotel via a direct booking channel, the hotel has to pay the chain a fee in the amount of around 4% of the room rate. However, if the booking is done via OTA, the commission the OTA gets for the product distribution service it provided is in the ballpark of 20% of the room rate.
That's a huge difference in cost. It's not financially sensible to grant status perks to OTA guests. Besides, hotels want to incentivize people to book direct. You don't do that by rewarding people booking via OTA.