By their very nature, hotel and hospitality businesses make customer-centric experiences their priority. They compete by crafting inviting surroundings, providing amenities, and training staff to do everything they can to make guests’ stays delightful. Legacy hotel payment solutions, however, often tied hoteliers’ hands when it came to providing the easiest, quickest, and most convenient payment experiences.
Modern hospitality payment systems remove many of the barriers to providing optimal hotel, resort and B&B guest experiences. With these solutions, hotel and hospitality businesses can:
- Speed check-in: Tired guests anxious to get to their rooms dread waiting in line while clerks match payment data to reservations, run cards, and print multiple forms. Hotel payment solutions that integrate with a property management system (PMS), hotel management software, or a point of sale (POS) system will streamline processes, which can pleasantly surprise guests with a quick check-in process.
- Improve checkout processes: Even after a comfortable, relaxing stay, a long, cumbersome checkout process can give the impression of substandard customer service. Integrated payments allow checkout to proceed smoothly, enabling the hotel to quickly add extra charges the guest made during the stay and generating a final invoice and receipt. Hotels with high guest traffic may even choose to offer unattended checkout at a kiosk.
- Accept online payments: Hotel guests in the digital age often prefer to search for available accommodations and compare prices online. When a guest finds the perfect option, they need an easy-to-navigate online payment process, whether they’re paying for the room in full or giving the hotel their card number for pre-authorization.
- Tokenize payments: An omnichannel hotel payment solution that enables the hotel to tokenize payment information can make stays even more convenient — guests don’t need to repeatedly present their cards for subsequent charges.
- Manage payments from booking agents: An integrated, omnichannel hotel payment solution gives managers the ability to manage all revenue streams and automatically share all payment data with its accounting system.
- Process multiple payment methods: Modern hotel payment solutions allow guests to use the payment methods they prefer, including credit and debit cards, mobile wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, contactless payments, and EMV chip card payments.
- Integrate loyalty: Hotel payment solutions integrated with the hotel’s loyalty solution offers guests the chance to earn loyalty points based on bookings or their spend and redeem points for discounts or other rewards.
- Keep payment data secure: Cyberattacks on major hotel chains are making headlines — and making millions of customer records vulnerable. Leading hotel payment platforms are compliant with Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards and feature best-of-breed security features to keep guest payment data safe.
- Go green: Integrated payment solutions automatically share data with the hotel’s management system and accounting programs. Integrated data reduces the need for paper records helping to preserve the environment — and also adding a layer of security to protect guest and payment information.
- Personalize service: The data from a hotel payment system can provide managers with valuable insights they can use to target marketing campaigns for greater effectiveness and build relationships by adding personal touches to guests’ stays.
Hotel Payment Solutions Are Up to the Task
Payment integration system features vary from provider to provider, so it’s vital for hotels to implement a solution from a company with experience in their industry.
Guest satisfaction starts and ends at the front desk. Create efficient, convenient, customer-centric payment experiences that contribute to a delightful stay overall.
