Today’s tourism offer is largely digitalized, and local public players, merchants, travel agencies, accommodation and activity providers have all understood the need to turn to digital technology to promote their business and attract customers.
OTAs (Online Tourism Agencies) and marketplaces have become essential for marketing tourism products and services. From searching for information to booking and organizing their stay, travelers have become accustomed to doing everything remotely from their phone or computer. They therefore expect the same level of service when dealing directly with a host or equipment rental company, for example.
However, managing the purchasing process can be complex, especially when it comes to payments. A tourism product represents a significant cost, is often booked several months in advance, and then involves a customer relationship linked to payment that is punctuated right up to the date of the stay by: deposits, split payments, sometimes multiple participants, and must integrate management of partial or total refunds depending on cancellation dates.
One of the major challenges facing the tourism industry is to streamline the sales process, whatever the sales channel (OTA, marketplace, personal website…), firstly to simplify the task for their customers, and secondly to optimize their own management costs. The solution: integrate digital payment.
Simplify your shopping experience with digital payment
Digitizing the purchasing process is a real challenge for all professionals, but particularly for the tourism industry. Whether it’s taking a credit card imprint, a down payment, a deposit, or deferred debiting of the balance, managing these payments is time-consuming and has a direct impact on the customer experience. The events of the last two years have also shown the importance of having agile tools to counter unforeseen events, such as cancellations and therefore mass reimbursements.
Improving the settlement process and automating payment-related customer relations are effective ways of reducing the amount of human time spent on payments, securing your revenues and improving your customer experience and image.
The little + of digital payment
If you don’t take a deposit at the time of booking, be sure to limit your risk of non-payment with a 3DS-verified card imprint.
Thanks to your customer’s 3DSecure authentication, you can effectively limit the risk of disputes. What’s more, this action will identify whether your customer is using a prepaid or fraudulent card, which are bound to cause problems when the balance is debited.
Adapt to your international clientele
As you can see, choosing digital payment is a key to profitability. But to have an even greater impact on your sales, you also need to think about your international clientele.
To do this, adapt to the payment specificities of each country, by supporting different currencies or payment card types. This will increase your sales opportunities tenfold.
Online booking, physical tourism
By its very nature, the tourism sector is strongly affected by omnichannel marketing. A stay can be booked online, paid for remotely and then completed in situ.
The aim is to ensure that tourism players don’t break the shopping experience. A customer who has made an online purchase needs to be recognized once he or she arrives in the store, both to better identify his or her purchasing desires and to better guide him or her in discovering the destination and what it has to offer.
Beyond the relationship and the purchasing experience, omnichannelity is also at the heart of customer loyalty. Data from the entire payment flow can be centralized in a single interface. This unified data means that you can no longer distinguish between your digital and physical customers, and thus obtain high-quality information to enrich your loyalty marketing strategy.
