George Maroufidis, Business Development Manager and Travel Lead at ECOMMPAY, has some vital tips for companies hoping to turn payments tech to their advantage in a changing business landscape.

Travel is changing. From take-off to touchdown, from check-in to check-out, the travel industry is grappling with a world which is increasingly diverse, mobile, and online. Those kinds of changes can pose a lot of challenges to operators that find themselves unequipped to deal with a rapidly-shifting business environment. Fortunately, ECOMMPAY has saved the day for baffled businesses with the release of a new white paper , exhaustively detailing a new breed of industry pain-points, and how to solve them with the latest and greatest in payments technology.

Drawing on a wealth of statistics and years of experience in payment processing, the white paper covers the absolute necessity for travel companies to adapt to the changing tides of online payments before they find themselves swallowed by them. More than that, though, the paper finds that embracing new developments in payment tech—and partnering with providers with a genuine understanding of your business’ operations—can prove a key advantage for savvy travel companies.

Analysis from All Angles
The paper deals comprehensively with all quarters of the travel industry. Recognising that a diversity of services requires a diversity of solutions, the paper tackles everything under the seemingly endless umbrella of ‘travel’, from flights to hotels to taxis. Pulling from a range of stats and sources, the key issues facing each of the major sections of the travel industry are addressed intelligently and comprehensively. For example, perhaps the biggest and most stubborn problem facing the hospitality sector in 2018 is no-shows: customers booking a room and, for whatever reason, just not turning up to check-in. ECOMMPAY’s white paper deftly assesses the impact of no-shows on hotels of all sizes and all locations, from tiny independent operations in the EU to the enormous chains spread across the globe, and proposes a set of solutions to mitigate and rebalance their negative effects.

Going beyond hotels, the white paper seeks to confront issues affecting the industry as a whole in both general and specific terms. That is, to clearly deal with problems in terms of their industry-wide effects and their specific impacts on particular businesses within it. Notably, the pernicious issue of so-called ‘friendly fraud’ is a bugbear of the entire travel industry, but it puts a particular burden on car rental agencies, whose customers are prone to issuing chargebacks for fuel charges, toll taxes or damage fees, and who lose a great deal of time and revenue to dealing with the friendly fraudsters. The paper clearly outlines how friendly fraud comes about and the damage it can do, before putting forth a set of recommendations for an effective industry response to the issue.

Adapting, Surviving, and Thriving
Throughout the paper it is clear that the proper way to not only adapt to the problems of a new travel landscape, but to thrive in spite of them, is a payments technology foundation that’s tailored to the needs of customers and merchants alike. Ultimately, so many problems—whether no-shows, friendly fraud or something else—become much easier to handle (or even solvable) if an operator has a strong partnership with an experienced payment service provider, and a payments tech foundation that’s able to adapt to any situation, whether it’s detecting fraud before it happens, or facilitating hotel guests’ spending habits. With the right tech and expertise, businesses can turn their most obstinate problems into their most significant advantages.

The precise techniques and technologies that make up that foundation are detailed expansively in the paper itself, with a multitude of ways (from security measures like tokenisation to the clever transaction flow magic of payment routing) to smooth an operator’s customer journey and prevent hitches in the payment process, whatever the source. The result is an absolutely vital resource for any operator looking to carve out an advantage for themselves in an industry undergoing rapid and far-reaching change.

Because, well, like we said, travel is changing. But just what that means, and who it affects, is down to travel companies themselves. Change might be intimidating, but to the boldest, smartest, and best-equipped, it’s a chance to shake things up and get your foot in a few doors that have been closed up until now. In a world where customers are flitting between operators, looking for the ones that understand and serve them best, it’s possible to capture their loyalty with the right tech, knowledge, and timing. With years of experience and a suite of innovative and exciting payments solutions, ECOMMPAY’s white paper can provide you with the first two; the timing is up to you.

Click here to download the report.

If you’d like to discuss in further detail, please meet George at WTM London, where ECOMMPAY will be exhibiting innovative payment solutions tailored to the travel industry at Stand TT510.