Payment Processing In The Hotel industry
Many years back, payment processing in the hotel industry was through cash payments. Customers step into the hotel, reach the front desk, and pay the cash amount for the room.
The cash payment process was followed a decade back. Now in 2023, things have changed. In the technological era, customers prefer to pay online.
Modes of payment in hotel reservations are credit card, debit card, QR code, UPI, pay later, or any other.
Why is Online Payment Preferred?
According to economics times, digital payment, or online payment in a country like India, its financial year of 2023 logged 23.06 billion digital transactions worth Rs 38.3 lakh crore.
It includes all sectors like e-commerce, travel and tourism, retail, the hotel industry, and others.
Online payment is preferable because of many reasons:
- It is fast and does not take much time. It is simple and goes in a few clicks. The person does not need to take out cash and get the bill. With online payment, they get confirmation over the electronic device.
- With online payment, the person had the liberty to pay at any time anywhere. It is one of the biggest reasons for online booking in the hotel industry.
- The log is kept easily with the online transaction. When the money gets deducted, the user can get an SMS on the phone.
- Multiple offers, rewards, and discounts are available in online payment.
Therefore, online payment is the preferable mode of payment in hotel.
How Online Payment Works in the Hotel Industry?
The three entities play a vital role in online payment.
- The receiver’s bank account
- The payer’s bank account
- The payment processor.
The receiver bank account is the hotel’s bank account in which the payment gets credits.
The payer bank account is the bank account from which the money gets debits.
The payment processor is a bridge between the receiving bank and the payer bank. It manages security and safety during the payment process.
For this processing, we need the payment gateway. The payment gateway will collect the information from the customer and forward it to the payment processor.
How to Initiate Online Payment in the Hotel Industry?
If you want your hotel website to support online payment, then it should have the best payment gateway for hotels.
Payment gateway integration plugin:
The payment gateway plugin on your hotel website allows you to take customers’ information and process their payments.
For payment processing, it takes options of debit card, credit card, e-wallet, and many others.
These payment gateways charge a processing fee from you for each transaction.
QloApps is a free hotel software system that provides the best payment gateway. A few of them are given below.
CitrusPay: With the QloApps CitruspPay addon, you can integrate the Citrus pay payment gateway and hotel website so that customers can pay for their booking by debit card and credit card.
PayU: With QloApps PayU payment, a hotelier can integrate the PayU payment gateway with the hotel booking website. The customer can make payment by using a debit card, credit card, UPI, wallet, etc.
CCAvenue: QloApps CCAvenue payment gateway supports Credit cards, Debit cards, Net Banking, IMPS transfers, etc. online payments. This addon integrates the payment gateway and the hotel website.
Challenges Faced in Online Payments
Like every coin has two sides, online payments also have. There are many challenges in online payment too:
- Transaction stops due to low internet speed.
- Stealing of card details and money lost.
- Expensive international transactions.
- A technical glitch in online payment is faced by mid-size hotels.
How to Cover the Challenges?
There are many ways to control the challenges seen in online payment. These ways can be applied to any mode of payment in hotel reservation system. Let us know about them one by one:
- It is good to have a small size of hotel website or mobile application that can load easily, and process payment at a lower speed.
- Kindly use the updated mobile application for making online payments.
- Do not save the CVV number and card details in the payment gate.
- It will be good if your hotel website has a 2-step verification process. It will provide more security in the payment process.
- The browser cache stores any type of data. It may also include your bank account details. Therefore after making any kind of payment always clean your browser cache.
Conclusion
Hence, we can see that there are multiple modes of payment in hotel reservations. It is up to your website requirements what payment mode and payment gateway suits it.
There is no doubt online payment for booking is a requirement in this generation as well, and it is best if it is safe and secure.
Please Share Your Review
That’s all from modes of payment the hotel industry. Hope you like our article. Kindly share your review.
If you are looking to launch your hotel website, QloApps is a free hotel booking software that helps you to launch your hotel website. Also, QloApps have the best payment gateway for hotels that can integrate with QloApps.
In case of any doubt, you can raise your query on the QloApps Forum.