Skift Take

Guests are returning to hotels and are more ready than ever to embrace digital and mobile technology to take control of their journeys. The challenge for hotels is balancing the right level of face-to-face interaction and contactless options to ensure a five-star experience.

This sponsored content was created in collaboration with a Skift partner.

Today, we’re publishing a new report by Planet, “A Five Star Experience: Delight Guests With Technology and Service,” which explores how hotels can delight guests with safer and frictionless digital payment solutions while still delivering premium services.

Guests are coming back to hotels eager to use digital and mobile technology — including contactless payments many initially adopted due to safety and hygiene concerns during the height of the pandemic — to reduce time spent queueing and handling credit cards. But each guest has a different preference for the level of service they want to engage with digitally. The challenge for hoteliers is to find the right balance between digital, contactless experiences and high-end personal touch.

The solution is to put guests in control of their experience by integrating digital options, including a seamless, contactless payment process, at every step of the journey. As Steve O’Donovan, chief payments officer at Planet, explained, the ‘magic of tokenization’ is key here. “Everything is smoother and quicker and puts guests in a better mood. … And if your guests are feeling good, they won’t worry as much about their spending and are less likely to be checking the bill.”

With a streamlined digital payments system, hotels can also lower operating costs and use insights to drive more revenue and better understand guest wants and needs. O’Donovan said, “One of the other spin-offs from tokenization is that as guests spend, the data from their activities can be captured and analyzed. The token provides a unique identifier to track guests, and with the appropriate permissions in place, the data can be plugged into enterprise systems such as CRM systems and loyalty platforms. This is amazingly useful for returning customers who we know spend more on subsequent trips to a hotel.”

This report from Planet explores how hotels can utilize seamless, contactless payment technology to maximize guest spend, while at the same time, ensure a five-star guest experience personalized for each guest.

This report looks at:

  • The seven biggest challenges facing the hospitality sector today
  • Why streamlining operations is vital for converting hotel revenue growth to profitability going forward
  • How Planet’s modular payment platform links to every aspect of a hotel’s operations, scaling up according to a property’s needs
  • Several examples of how to integrate digital payments and other contactless options at every step of the guest journey
  • Three tips to make Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) less intimidating for guests and hotel staff

This content was created collaboratively by Planet and Skift’s branded content studio, SkiftX.

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Tags: luxury, Payment Technology, payments, SkiftX Showcase: Technology, travel payments

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