How Payments can drive Positive Moments of Truth with your Hotel Guests
A poor payment experience can cast a shadow on a guest’s overall stay. Lorraine Fahy, Chief Marketing Officer at Prommt, discusses how you can deliver a slick, sophisticated and streamlined payment experience for your guests, while significantly reducing payments admin and operations costs.
I’ve had the pleasure of staying in some beautiful hotels during my career travels, and I’m always struck by the sheer level of detail that a luxury hotel will go to, to ensure a five-star guest experience. Every touch point with a guest is an opportunity to deliver the highest level of service.
Payments are a key touch point in the overall guest experience
However, sometimes, this falls short when it comes to payments. A poor payment experience can cast a shadow on a guest’s overall stay. This can often occur at the point of booking, which is the very first moment of truth, the first opportunity for a guest to form a positive or negative impression of the hotel. Check-in, settling outstanding balances, and check-out are other key opportunities for a hotel to create positive moments of truth. The common thread here is payments, and an outdated payment process can mar the overall guest experience. Making the payment process as convenient and ‘invisible’ as possible can transform these experiences into pleasant ones.
Making payments invisible and effortless
Guests expect a slick, frictionless payment process that runs in the background, requiring minimal time and attention. Studies show that nearly 50% of guests prefer contactless payments, and over half seek a fully contactless check-in and check-out experience. The ideal payment experience is one that guests don’t have to think about – it should seamlessly blend into their overall stay. Having to call out credit card details over the phone to a stranger when booking, or experience delays at checkout due to payment issues, all add friction that is no longer necessary.
Another aspect to consider is the time invested by hotel teams in managing and chasing payments. How frequently are they bogged down fixing errors or reconciling payments? These tasks can consume a significant portion of hotel staff’s day without contributing additional value to the guest experience or business goals.
So, what can a hotel do to simplify their guest’s payment journey, reduce payments admin, and ensure fast, secure and compliant transactions?
With an advanced payments request platform like Prommt, hotels can revolutionise guest payments across all areas of hospitality – reservations, meetings and events, onsite gym or golf memberships and spa.
Prommt has been working closely with the hospitality sector for almost seven years, building a depth of experience and knowledge of the payment challenges and pain points faced by hotels today. Prommt provides a premium solution, offering the ability to easily collect advance payments, outstanding charges, or high value event transactions in a cost effective and secure manner. It reduces exposure to chargebacks and card fraud, while also being compliant with GDPR and the relevant Data Protection legislation.
Our secure bank and card checkouts follow your guests wherever they are, however they want to pay – via SMS, email, web chat, messaging apps, and can be integrated to the hotel’s website to provide online payments. Prommt focuses on security, trust and a payment journey that reflects the hotel’s brand identity, extending it to all touch points within the payment journey. Furthermore, platform features such as group send, scheduled payments, branded templates etc. are all highly relevant for the hospitality industry.
Driving cost efficiencies in event payments
An accelerating area of demand is Pay by Bank. Offering payment method options such as open banking and card drives cost savings, greater convenience and choice. Pay by Bank is particularly relevant for high value transactions generally associated with weddings and events. Many of our clients choose to request the first deposit payment for a large event or wedding by card, and schedule subsequent milestone payments by bank. This eliminates card fees and the hassle of manual bank transfers. Alternatively, the hotel property can set rules to automatically determine the payment method presented depending on value thresholds or location. For example, the default payment method for an event payment over £5,000 can be Pay by Bank, but card (or both) can be offered for transactions that fall under that threshold.
Reflecting the hotels’ brand identity
Hotels can send branded, personalised payment links, and guests will see a URL they recognise. Emails come from the hotel’s official domain, and SMS has a custom ID. Consistent branding builds trust in the payment journey.
Easy integration to Oracle OPERA PMS
Prommt can seamlessly integrate to the hotel PMS, enabling reservation staff to easily send payment requests directly from the property management system using SMS, email or paylink, and view the payment status within the same system. Prommt currently integrates with Oracle OPERA 5 and OPERA Cloud.
Autocharge for events and conferences
Prommt’s Autocharge feature is a more secure and convenient solution for stored card payments. It provides greater certainty over event deposits and final balances. As guests’ card details are tokenised and stored with your payment gateway, there is no need to view or store card details locally.
During the booking process, you send the payer a payment request for a deposit, which includes an optional opt-in to Autocharge. If the guest has opted in, hotel staff can automatically charge the final balance to the card. The payer receives a notification receipt by email detailing that the charge has been applied. This process significantly reduces payments admin and the potential for revenue leakage when running large-scale events concurrently.
Autocharge can be used to easily charge extras like room service, spa treatments, and any other items to your guest’s card. This makes payments nearly ‘invisible’, and at the same time eliminates the risk of compromising sensitive card data and minimises chargeback risks.
Recurring payments for guest memberships
Prommt enables hotels to easily set up personalised payment plans and manage recurring payments for guest memberships, ideal for co-located golf resorts and fitness centres. This radically reduces the chances of human error and manual intervention that ties up staff time. Key staff are alerted as soon as a payment is made, and comprehensive reporting is available to facilitate reconciliation of payments.
Built for teams
Prommt excels at team management and flexible access control, enabling hotels to deploy and manage across many hotel locations and internal departments. Stay on top of all payment communications, and issue reminders & refunds at the touch of a button. With live status tracking and insights, hotels can view and filter all information about their SMS and email payments with a real-time statistics dashboard.
Additionally, hotels can increase payment success rates by setting automated chase paths for failed transactions, seamlessly presenting alternative payment options to complete the payment.
Take payments to the next level
Prommt enables hotels to deliver a slick, sophisticated and streamlined payment experience for their guests, while significantly reducing payments admin and operations costs. Prommt is an enterprise-grade solution that is built for teams, supporting multiple locations, and provides powerful reporting and alerting capabilities.
Prommt is trusted by many of the most luxurious hotels across the UK and Ireland, providing us with the experience and knowledge of working with hotels of the highest calibre.