A guest who has just said yes should not have to wait to pay.
They pay on their own phone, in the conversation they are already in.
Flowers in the room, the table deposit, the spa treatment, the balance on the morning they leave. If the conversation is already open, the payment belongs in it. Nobody keys in a card.
Show us where payments get stuck. Nothing to prepare.Whitcombe HouseGood morning Mrs Ellis. Your balance for the stay is £412.50. You can settle it here whenever suits: whitcombe.pay/ellis
Done. Could the invoice go to my work email? sarah@ellisdesign.co.uk
Whitcombe HouseOf course, it is on its way there now. Leave the key in the box by the door, and safe travels.
Every payment you take by hand costs you twice.
01Pay for flowers in the room
They say yes, then wait for someone to take a card.
Someone keys in card details read out over the phone.
02Pay a deposit
Three emails asking for the same thing.
The same deposit chased three times, then once more by phone.
03Settle the bill
The guest waits at reception to settle their bill and request an invoice.
Reception handles admin that could have been completed before the guest reached the desk.
The payments that still need a person.
Card details read out over the phone and typed in at the desk. A deposit chased three times by email, then once more by phone. A queue at eight in the morning, because everybody leaves at the same time.
Each one is a member of your team doing something that did not need a person. And keyed-in card payments are the ones most likely to be declined, disputed or charged back.
The payment sits inside the conversation that created it.
Your guest is already in a conversation with your hotel. They ask for flowers in the room, and the link arrives in that same thread. They pay on their phone, and the conversation carries on.
Your team does not create the link, send it, or check afterwards whether it was paid.
Most payment tools give your team a dashboard and a button, which is one more system to learn and one more thing to remember. Here the request goes out as part of the conversation, with nothing for your team to press.
Every payment in the stay, in the same thread.
Before arrival
- Deposits
- Pre-payment
- The non-refundable element you would otherwise chase
During the stay
- The flowers they ordered
- The table they booked
- The treatment they added
Events
- Wedding and meeting deposits, in the conversation the enquiry started in
On departure
- The final balance, matched to the folio
- The invoice, emailed wherever they need it
The last payment of the stay is the one most likely to go wrong.
It gets taken in a hurry, at a busy desk, often on a card that is not the one held on the reservation. It is also the payment your night audit spends longest reconciling.
Settled on the guest's own phone it arrives already matched to the folio, so the room closes clean and nobody is chasing forty pounds a week later.
The safest card payment is one nobody at the hotel keys in.
The riskiest payment in a hotel is the one read out over the phone and typed in at the desk. It is the one most likely to be mistyped, overheard, written on a pad, declined or disputed later.
Your guest pays on their own phone, through the payment provider. The card details go straight from your guest to the payment provider. Nobody at your hotel sees or keys them in, and neither do we. So the payment is safer than the one you take today, for your team as well as your guest.
Your payment provider, or ours.
If you already have a payment provider you are happy with, we use it. If you would rather not, we bring ours, which is PCI DSS Level 1 certified. Either way the charge lands on the folio and the reservation updates, so nobody re-keys anything.
Settling a live balance means reading it from your PMS, so checkout needs a connection. Taking a deposit or paying for an extra does not.
Start with the payment your team chases most.
Thirty minutes
Show us the action that is harder than it should be. We will tell you honestly whether we can improve it.
One session
We map what the guest is trying to do, what the team needs, how the brand should sound and where the existing systems help or get in the way.
Three weeks
The work is ours: we build the journey, shape the messages, connect it and test it.
Fifteen minutes
We walk the relevant team through the small part they will see.
Two months
Prove it in the operation before making an annual commitment.
What are your guests trying to do that is harder than it should be?
Bring us the action, the brand, the awkward systems and the operational reality. We will shape the message for each channel and build the easiest route through them.
Show us where guests get stuck. Nothing to prepare. Sometimes the honest answer is that you do not need us.