What Is Engine and How Does it Work? All Your Burning Booking Questions Answered!

New to Engine?

We bet you’ve got loads of questions about our service and how it can simplify hotel booking for your business.

That’s why we’ve put together this post. It covers all of the Engine basics — what we do, how we do it, and how to sign up to our time-and-cost-effective hotel booking platform.

Let’s dive right in:

What is Engine?

Engine is an exclusive hotel search and booking solution that gives our members access to incredible rates at more than 750,000+ hotels around the globe. Because our platform is built specifically for businesses and workforce travel, the companies we work with are able to streamline their entire lodging process while also significantly reducing their costs.

The Engine website and app are free to join and to use. What’s more — because members can make, book, and alter reservations in their Engine account— planning a hotel stay has never been easier.

Currently, our platform is trusted by more than 40K businesses and more than 600K members.

Who is Engine for?

Business travel is an essential activity in many sectors. If you’re a business traveler yourself — or you organize travel on behalf of a small, medium-sized, enterprise business or government team — then our hotel booking platform has been designed with all of your needs in mind.

How can business travelers use Engine?

Working with a set budget?

Tired of hopping from one comparison site to the other looking for deals?

Planning a multi-stop business trip across a number of cities and hotels?

Engine makes it easy to manage your hotel reservations from one centralized location — rather than multiple hotel websites.

You’ll also save money on your hotel bookings, get access to the best hotel inventory options on the market, and have the added benefit of 24/7, US-based customer support should you need it.

Engine for small, medium-sized, enterprise, and government businesses

If you’re running or working at any type of business, you get all the perks available to individual business travelers, with a few added extras:

• Access to Direct Billing
• A double rewards program that lets you layer HE Rewards points on top of other hotel brand-specific loyalty programs
• An admin dashboard with valuable insight on spend, trends, etc.
• Engine’s Incidentals Coverage Program
• Dedicated 24/7 US-based customer support
• Custom fields and individual user controls
• Unlimited users on the company account
• In-person training for account administrators and coordinators

What sets Engine apart from other online travel management platforms?

Why use Engine over other hotel booking options? We’re confident that our features speak for themselves:

Big savings

The travel experts at Engine use their experience — and our collective buying power — to offer incredible deals, delivering rates up to 60% off.

Speedy search

Search, filter and sort hotels by location, amenities, price and percentage of savings. Engine connects you to your new favorite business hotel in seconds.

All your payments in one place

Say goodbye to individual hotel bills.

Engine provides invoices and monthly statements covering every trip — all the expense info you need for your own company reporting. You can choose to pay-as-you-go or ask about getting a consolidated monthly bill.

Access to historical data

Your personalized dashboard captures all the business travel data you need, right at your fingertips. View all company hotel stays and what the favorite hotels are of your travelers. Find out how much you’ve spent (and more importantly—how much you’ve saved). Then, make sure your CFO buys you lunch.

Easy analytics

Your dashboard also helps you to spot patterns, find inefficiencies, and get a total overview of your company’s travel activity. Whether the buck stops with you or someone higher up, you have all the info you need to make informed business travel decisions moving forward.

Everywhere you need to be

We have hotels in the US, Canada and 185+ countries worldwide. So whether you need to stay in the middle of a city or out in the sticks, chances are one of our 700,000+ hotel partners will fit the bill.

24/7 member support

Plans change. When your itinerary needs an update, our friendly Member Support team is at the end of the phone to help you alter your booking. No long holds. No re-routing you to an international customer service line. We’re also on hand whenever you have a question about any reservations or your account.

Stress-free group bookings

Things can get complicated when you’re managing big group bookings or extended stays, so let our expert travel team do the hard work for you!

We’ll find and manage hotel reservations that match your requirements — getting you the best prices for a heckuva lot less hassle.

Engine FAQs

Do you work with the big hotel brands?

Our members are spoiled for choice. We currently have more than 700,000 hotels on our platform, many of which belong to the big hotel brands you know and love. That number is growing all the time, too. We’re focused on world domination (Not in a scary way. In a best business travel hotel booking platform globally, way.).

If you currently collect reward points for a particular hotel brand, you can continue to do so when booking through Engine. (You can also layer those rewards on top of your Engine Rewards for additional savings!)

How much does it cost to use Engine?

Our platform is completely free to use. Additionally, customers who use Engine enjoy no booking fees, no contracts, and no minimum spend.

Engine is able to leverage amazing rates from our hotel partners due to the collective buying power of our exclusive community of travelers.

This translates to excellent savings for you, more guests for hotels, and the ability for us to keep doing what we do. Win-win all around.

How do I book a hotel room?

Search and filter available hotels, select your room(s), and click ‘complete booking’.

Payments can be processed in one of two ways:

• One, you can pay for your room upon booking.
• Or you can enroll in our Direct Bill program by speaking to a member of our team. Our Direct Bill members keep it simple and pay a single hotel bill at the end of each month, rather than multiple spread out payments.

What if I need to cancel my reservation?

Cancellation policies are at the discretion of each hotel; that information is all readily available for you vian Engine before you book your stay. We continuously work with our hotel partners to ensure reservations are as flexible as possible.

You can easily cancel a refundable reservation from inside your Engine account. If you need assistance, just reach out to a member of our Member Experience team.

How do I join?

Ready to claim your free Engine account? Just enter a few details about yourself and your company here to get started. Our team will verify your business information and send you an invitation to the platform.

You can then start booking your business lodging through Engine, saving time and money in the process!

Welcome to the club.

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