Meeting the expectations of the modern consumer has never been more important. The impact of major developments like COVID-19 and Brexit has been significant on the financial climate and has led to some major shakeups and new trends that everyone has had to adjust to, especially those working in hospitality. Major shifts in consumer demands and technological advancements are leaving a lot of businesses on the back foot.
The way consumers make and expect payments to be made has drastically changed. Cash is barely present in modern payments, and the use of cards is dwindling. After the pandemic, automated and more hygienic options like in-app payments, contactless, pay-by-tap or self-check-in now tends to be the way the modern consumer prefers to pay.
Embracing technology to deliver improvements in customer experience
Despite these daunting obstacles, hope is not lost. Embracing technology can mitigate these challenges and help the hospitality sector maintain customer service excellence. As technology continues to advance, the hospitality industry needs to embrace change and new payment options to improve customer experience in line with the rest of the industry.
Being able to adapt means having a clear situational understanding so you can stay ahead of current developments. COVID-19 was a massive shake-up for the hospitality industry. In a modern climate where hygiene has become a top priority for customers, contactless has become the norm in payments; reduced wait time, increased convenience and a better overall customer experience have helped solidify contactless as the prevalent method of modern payment.
Contactless has kicked off a whole new era of constantly evolving payment technology. Trust Payments has recognised the ever-evolving landscape of hospitality and is dedicated to consistently meeting customer demands by developing a comprehensive suite of solutions that align with the expectations of the consumer. Awareness and understanding of the payments technology landscape is key to being adaptive and innovative.
Using data to drive a customer experience strategy
Utilising data on customer preferences is key to staying ahead in hospitality. Since Trust Payments started 25 years ago, we have had a large hospitality-centric customer base and by learning to harvest the data we hold, we’ve been able to optimise our hospitality solutions for a better customer experience.
We process payments for 10% of all UK hotel locations, providing us with behavioural payment data on roughly 5.7 million hotel guests across the country. This data, captured in our tool TRU Insight, has helped us to identify key trends in the industry – for example, 51% of guests are UK residents, while 49% are international arrivals.
It’s vital to keep up with what customers expect. Utilising information like this can help hotels see correlations between factors relevant to transaction volume, adjust their marketing campaigns accordingly and partner with the right merchants to increase their sales. The ability to obtain, package, and present this data to partners and merchants is a game changer for improving customer experience and business growth.
Helping hotels with Converged Commerce™
Trust Payments is embracing the needs of the modern payments industry with our unique strategy. As the payments and commerce landscape becomes increasingly complex it makes the coordination of endless business channels increasingly tricky to navigate. Converging the various channels of a business can make life better for both the business and the customer.
Businesses should connect their payment technology to other business-critical systems such as e-commerce, ePOS, stock control, loyalty, and data reporting to meet modern customer expectations.
In simple terms, businesses need to connect their payment technology with other business-critical systems and deliver them seamlessly to any relevant device. This merger of sales channels, customer journeys and data allows merchants to focus on the bigger picture: delivering the kind of customer experiences that drive growth. Trust Payments calls this Converged Commerce™.
Hopefully, this article has given you a good grasp on delivering exceptional customer experiences in hospitality and how Trust Payments can assist.
You can read more about Trust Payments in hospitality here.
