Despite new companies, platforms, and technologies promising faster reconciliation, transparency, and fewer disputes over commission payments in luxury travel, the industry still finds itself playing a game of finger-pointing and recrimination.
But what if the real issue wasn’t commissions at all, but cash flow?
“Commission disputes and delayed payments have been a challenge for both hotels and travel agencies for years,” Sarolta Mike, former head of commercial at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Malta and co-founder of an independent revenue and distribution consulting firm for hotels, wrote in an email to Luxury Travel Advisor.
“We invested heavily in building strong relationships with our agency partners," she added. "Luxury markets rely on relationships, and payment delays inevitably put strain on those connections."
In a typical commissionable booking, a hotel prepares inventory, service, and revenue while it waits for the guest to check out.
Travel agencies and advisors typically fall further downstream, as they’re paid weeks or sometimes even months after checkout under the commissionable model.
Multiply that delay across currencies, intermediaries, and manual reconciliation, and the tension shows up in familiar places: supplier apprehension over cancellations and revenue, underinvestment in technology, persistent friction with payment processors, and business partners floating cash through the reconciliation process.
“Too often, teams end up spending time validating information that has passed through multiple departments and systems,” wrote Mike.
That backdrop helps explain why one relatively new entrant to the financial space of the travel industry is drawing more attention.
FinPay is a licensed financial institution now offering what hotels and other suppliers in the luxury travel industry may actually need — a bank that understands the nuances of luxury travel’s financial structure.
When agency commissions aren’t paid on time or are truncated by fees, the current system effectively treats travel agencies like free, short-term lines of credit for suppliers.
Founded in 2020 by Juan Antonio Soriano, FinPay is a licensed Electronic Money Institution regulated by the Bank of Spain.
Unlike payment processors, which may be legally constrained from handling funds directly, FinPay’s EMI license requires it to hold funds in safeguarded accounts separate from operational funds.
By coupling that with a special purpose vehicle, the company can settle cross-border payments at rates competitive with bank transfers.
This allows the company to offer a unique financial option to hotels, especially seasonal ones, which can borrow against the full value of confirmed future invoices if and when they need it.
Borrowing against those confirmed invoices could give hotels a way to access cash before a guest arrives, instead of waiting to collect their revenue upon checkout.
Funds are placed in escrow-like accounts and released according to predefined terms and rules, thereby reducing uncertainty around timing, foreign exchange exposure, or downstream commission payments for travel agencies.
“The industry has spent years trying to fix commissions after the fact,” said Marietta Fox, senior director of strategic partnerships at FinPay. “What’s often missing is a way to manage liquidity upfront, so payments don’t become a problem in the first place.”
New Eyes on an Old Problem
Fox spent years working in hospitality and finance before arriving at FinPay, watching hotels and intermediaries struggle with delayed settlement, rising card fees, and fragmented data.
“It always struck me as odd that an industry this global was still operating on such rigid, slow financial rails,” she said.
Regular banks lend to hotels, but usually for property or other assets. Banks are not built around or equipped for the messy travel payment chain of bookings, cancellations, distribution, or commission disbursements.
But the need for financing seems to be more urgent than hoteliers may admit.
Luxury Travel Advisor has received reports that some hotels are withholding commission payments from agencies because their properties lack cash flow.
“It’s not unheard of, especially in shoulder months or low season,” remarked Mike, who now advises private clients on how to overcome revenue challenges.
“Adding to the complications is that hotels prioritize other suppliers over an individual agency fee when cash flow is tight," she explained. "It’s possible the hotel financial manager will prioritize other costs and pay the commission once the hotel cash flow is healthy."
“Both industries’ income is volatile," she added. "Luxury doesn’t mean abundance in cash."
“It’s prompted a bigger conversation on how we approach this with our partners, from the major brands to the more independently minded hotels,” wrote Kristin Chambers, founder of the Virtuoso-affiliated agency TravelLustre, in an email. “We’ve already begun following up with our global contacts, asking a fairly direct question: Why not explore alternative payment solutions and move away from the current cycle of redirects and delays?”
Alternatives Stalled
The idea behind Forbes Travel Guide’s forthcoming program, Meridian, points to the same problem, albeit from another angle.
Announced in early 2025 at The Summit in Monaco as part of an advanced commission payment platform, the program is being designed to let the organization pay endorsed agencies earlier and collect from hotels later.
While the program has not yet officially launched and represents a different side of the problem, it does signal that another major player has identified delayed commissions as an issue of timing and finance, rather than process.
“It’s a very new initiative for us to explore," Amanda Frasier, president of standards and ratings at Forbes Travel Guide, said of the initiative in a phone interview in March 2025. "It’s also a very complex initiative. Doing it well, doing it right, understanding the space and the other players is something that has taken time."
“Advanced commission is one element. Meridian will be multifunctional,” she added, but further details on cost and functionality remain unclear, as the program remains in development and only for FTG-endorsed agencies.
Likewise for agencies, another new alternative is emerging out of London. Still in stealth mode, one company is approaching agencies to ask them what it’s worth to have their commissions right away, instead of 40 to 60 days or more.
The response has been difficult to assess, but the company already has a lender willing to front funds in exchange for three percent of the commission.
The goal? Capture what they estimate to be a $700 million market of bottlenecked commissions from legacy payment processors.
While this solution may improve cash flow for agencies, it does not address the extra costs behind foreign exchange or transaction fees.
Depending on terms and conditions, the cost for hotels of using FinPay is about 0.5% interest for 30 days for what is effectively a short-term credit line.
That means hotels could have the liquidity needed to manage payroll, renovations, or seasonal demand swings without having to unnecessarily delay commission payments to travel agencies.
Notably, nothing in FinPay’s structure obligates a hotel to pass that liquidity downstream — whether faster commission payments follow remains the hotel’s call.
Juanjo Calafat, trade director of Iberostar Hotels & Resorts, described FinPay as “an opportunity for cost savings and efficiency,” noting that the platform helped increase payment certainty and automate collections electronically.
Daniel Nordholm, chief information officer of HBX Group, another distribution partner, said that “FinPay’s model marks an important step forward in modernizing B2B payments across the travel ecosystem.”
“Our focus is on predictable settlement and control,” said Ferran Vila, FinPay’s director of business development, who previously worked at Onyx Centersource.
Potential Does Not (Yet) Equal Promise
While the company is still in the early stages of its development, it has had strong traction among tour operators and distributors.
“What stands out about FinPay is the combination of faster access to funds and the involvement of a regulated financial institution,” said Mike. “That adds a level of confidence and strengthens trust in new and existing collaborations."
Nevertheless, FinPay faces two main challenges just like any venture: awareness and adoption.
Some hoteliers may remain skeptical because the adjacent issue of commission payments has been framed as a data or tech problem, while some brands and hotels, such as Rocco Forte or the Beaumont Mayfair, have already figured out how to improve payment efficiency using a combination of Sion and Onyx.
“We’re often removed from the day-to-day financials of hotel operations,” explained Chambers. “We all assume these properties are [flush] with cash and that delayed payments [mean] they simply do not value our partnership. This is causing increasing friction.”
“If anything, it reinforces the opportunity and the need for more transparency for both sides,” she added.
When questioned about technical barriers, Fox and Vila’s response was fairly plain: Registration works much like opening a regular bank account.
In 2025, the company processed close to 400 million euros (~$466 million), growth of more than 100% over the prior year, according to Vila.
FinPay has reportedly processed more than 100 million euros (~$116 million) in the first half of 2026 for HBX alone, and projections for the rest of the year remain significant.
If hotels are hung up on their cash flow, the issue around commission delays and foreign exchange fees could simply be a liquidity problem that has been hiding in plain sight.
By treating payments as financial infrastructure rather than back-office admin, Fox and Vila are testing a simple hypothesis: Clearer cash flows will help defuse travel’s longest-running dispute, and potentially unlock resources for hotels and agencies alike.
Whether FinPay becomes a category leader or an early signal of where the industry is headed remains to be seen. But if a 0.5%, 30-day advance is all it takes to keep commissions moving, luxury travel’s longest-running dispute may turn out to have less to do with commissions than with the cost of money.
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