Every hotelier knows that making payments easy is critical to success. While guests expect a quick and seamless paying experience, hotel staff and finance teams need to minimise their time spent on sluggish payment processes. And this is where technology such as SIHOT.PAYENGINE can make a huge difference.
Hotels need to go above and beyond to ensure paying is easy for guests. Standing at a check-in desk waiting for a staff member to manually tap in an endlessly long credit card number isn’t acceptable anymore, and negatively affects the guest experience. Guests also demand the ability to pay in their preferred way, whether it’s Apple Pay or using a prepaid credit card that gives them the best currency exchange rate. And at least 50% of guests expect contactless payments to be available – a figure that is rising steadily across all sectors.
Equally, hotel staff have better things to do than spend hours reconciling payments, or chasing the payments each guest has made at different outlets across a property.
Simplified payments matter to everyone in hotels.
The reality of omnichannel payments
Offering a range of payment options makes life a little more complex for hotels. This reality unfolds in a need to integrate physical terminals, e-commerce solutions, and payment apps to cater to all types of transactions. Physical terminals are essential for in-person payments at check-in desks, restaurants, and spa outlets. E-commerce solutions enable seamless online bookings and payments through the hotel’s website or app. And payment apps, such as mobile wallets including Apple Pay, add another layer of flexibility.
Working with a range of payment service providers (PSPs) is crucial for hotels to support this complex infrastructure. Different PSPs bring unique strengths, from offering competitive transaction fees to ensuring robust security measures and providing specific regional payment methods. By partnering with various PSPs, hotels can ensure they accommodate the most popular payment preferences of their diverse guest base. This not only improves the guest experience but also helps hotels boost their operational efficiency, reduce payment-related friction, and stay ahead in a competitive market.
SIHOT.PAYENGINE
Offering guests choice in payments and flexibly using PSPs brings many rewards, but managing an omnichannel approach behind the scenes on the property management system (PMS) hasn’t always been easy. And this is exactly why SIHOT.PAYENGINE was developed.
As a payment aggregator that can manage multiple PSPs, SIHOT.PAYENGINE means hotels don’t have to restrict themselves to a single provider. For example, Adyen, Computop, Global Blue, Nexi Group, Stripe, Worldline and Windcave are all fully supported by SIHOT.PAYENGINE. The technology enables the whole payment infrastructure to be centrally managed, while fully integrating with all the other PMS functionalities.
Payment security
This brings the potential for hotels to significantly improve their efficiency overall, in particular facilitating quicker checkout and billing processes. Security is also a focal point of SIHOT.PAYENGINE. The technology uses tokenisation to protect customer credit card details, which never even hit the PMS itself. SIHOT.PAYENGINE essentially acts as a proxy that keeps payment details secure, while simultaneously enabling pre-authorised payments or quick repeat payments when necessary.
SIHOT.PAYENGINE brings together a wide range of payment options to give hotel management and departments flexibility and the ability to easily manage all PoS terminals. It plugs seamlessly into existing SIHOT products and services, which means hotels can get on with delivering great guest experiences.
When guests can pay easily, they buy more. And when hotel staff are released from laborious manual tasks, they’re more likely to enjoy their jobs, be loyal and deliver excellent customer service. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.
Contact us to find out how SIHOT.PAYENGINE could improve your hotel’s systems.