How GuestPay is Revolutionising the Hotel Guest Experience by Streamlining Payment Processes

GuestPay is an award-winning payments system integrated into the Guestline platform, a leading provider of cloud-based property management systems (PMS) for the hospitality industry. It simplifies the payment process for guests and staff alike, making financial processes secure, efficient, and streamlined.

Payment processing plays a key role in the hospitality industry, yet it poses a significant challenge for hotels to handle. Currently, payment processing methods are time-consuming, leading to delays that can make guests unhappy. Additionally, these processes are typically manual, making them prone to errors, which may cause inconveniences to both guests and staff.

What’s more, manually managing payment data can be a daunting task, which can lead to inaccuracies and a lack of accurate insights into payment trends. These challenges can have a significant impact on the guest experience and the hotel as a whole, resulting in negative reviews and reduced revenue.

GuestPay is a payment management software designed to simplify payment processing for hotels. It offers secure payment processing, customisable payment rules, and automatic payment reconciliations. Its analytics further provide valuable insights into trends, enabling hotels to make informed payment decisions.

With GuestPay, hotels can streamline their payment processes, save time, reduce errors, and ultimately improve the guest experience.

The results of implementing GuestPay are significant. Hotels can process payments quickly and accurately, resulting in fewer payment disputes and satisfied guests.

Staff find it easier to manage payment data using GuestPay's intuitive interface. Guests, in turn, can enjoy the flexibility and peace of mind knowing they’re making a safe, seamless transaction to safeguard their booking.

GuestPay's reporting also empowers hotels to optimise their payment processes and increase revenue. The improved payment process results in an enhanced guest experience, leading to positive reviews and increased revenue.

Cuillin Hills Hotel was facing problems with their payment and reconciliation process and wanted to bring efficiencies to streamline processes for both the hotel and guests. To simplify the chargeback process, they needed to enhance the payment process for guests, and manage refunds more efficiently.

 
Upon installing GuestPay, the hotel seamlessly transformed its entire guest experience. Guests can now check and settle bills pre-departure from their phones (eliminating queues and allowing for queries to be resolved in advance).

The hotel further enjoyed increased efficiencies in payment processing, chargeback mitigation, and reconciliation, freeing up time for finance and front office teams to focus on more value-added tasks. Payment reconciliation was also simplified, with daily reports and access to a consolidated statement through the payment portal.

As a result, Cuillin Hills Hotel saw a recovery of approximately £3700 over one month due to internal administrative mistakes. The hotel also saw a significant reduction in chargebacks, with a 100% reduction in successful chargebacks since the implementation of GuestPay. This served to improve the hotel's overall cash flow, as payments can now be settled on a daily basis.

One of the main challenges New Forest Hotels faced was a need to enhance the guest experience by minimising physical contact during the pandemic. For this, the hotel group needed ways to streamline its payment processes and reduce the need for guests to handle cash or physically interact with staff.

The group further sought to implement a single payment portal to manage all PDQ and eCommerce transactions. The goal was to also secure more competitive rates with credit card providers and fully integrate its credit card service company with its PMS. Finally, with growing monthly commission payments, the group wanted to accelerate its direct bookings and find ways to enhance direct distribution.

 
To address the challenges, New Forest Hotels turned to GuestPay. The implementation enabled the company to offer contactless check-in and check-out, reducing front office queues and enhancing the overall guest experience. The DBM Google Connector resulted in an increase in direct bookings and a reduction in monthly OTA commission charges.

As a result, the hotel group was able to transform its payment process for guests, reduce the time taken to reconcile payments, reduce costs, and mitigate 'rogue' transactions. These solutions enabled New Forest Hotels to drive operational efficiencies and generate cost savings.

Similarly, St. Brelade's Bay Hotel was also looking for ways to provide a contact-free experience for guests during the pandemic. For that, they turned to GuestPay to modernise and streamline their check-in and check-out processes.

GuestPay allowed their guests to settle their bill from their phones, reducing check-out times from five minutes to just seconds. Now, guests can complete their registration pre-arrival, avoiding lengthy queues at reception. In the words of Jane Patterson, General Manager, ‘’ (...) Combined with GuestPay, the whole check-in and check-out experience has been transformed – check-out can now be completed in seconds (...)’’.

 
This solution has further improved front office operations, allowing teams to focus on servicing guests instead of handling check-in queues. GuestPay’s seamless integration with the hotel’s PMS mitigated security issues related to payments made over the phone.

As a result, this generated cost savings through reduced credit card fees and transaction charges, and reduced chargebacks, resulting in less time and resources spent investigating unrecognised payments.

The Tawny’s previous system lacked functionality, was time-consuming, prone to errors, and had a support team based in the US, which made it impractical to contact.

To solve this, the hotel turned to GuestPay. The implementation was seamless and didn’t significantly disrupt the hotel's daily operations. Deposits were correctly balanced in the first attempt, and bookings and rates were transferred without any issues.

 
The cloud solution's seamless integration and automation saved staff time and enabled the hotel to track sales and revenue more efficiently. The hotel staff also found it easier to train new starters with the new system. Josh Chadwik, Hotel Manager, says, ‘’‘Our office manager previously used Opera and loved it but now, having used Guestline, she wished she’d always had Guestline – it’s so much easier and intuitive to use. The team love it too!’’’

With that, the hotel saw a 75% increase in direct bookings, a 15% increase in ARR, and improved cash flow through GuestPay. The online check-in system with GuestStay also freed up staff and reduced waiting times.

Dart Marina Hotel had experienced downtime in the past due to the lack of regular updates, and they needed to find a flexible system that would provide automatic updates. The hotel also required a solution that would integrate with other systems seamlessly, and finding a system with an open API was challenging.

 
Upon installing GuestPay, the Dart Marina was able to achieve considerable cost and time savings. The automated and intuitive systems of the software have significantly helped the hotel reduce its operational wage bill by more than 35%, addressing the staffing challenges that have affected the hospitality industry.

As a result, the hotel now offers personalised, high-end service, as the software has enabled staff to spend more time with guests. This further allowed them to save around £30-40,000 per year in commission fees since they are no longer on any OTAs. The direct channel now accounts for about 60% of all bookings, which has simplified operations and saved on staff costs.

The new digitised processes have also helped alleviate staff shortages, and the hotel has been able to operate with a reduced level of staffing. This has led to significantly reducing the wage bill by over 35%, saving over 150 hours per week in payroll costs.

GuestPay is just one part of the larger Guestline platform, which provides a comprehensive suite of solutions for hotel operations. The GuestPay solution specifically provides hotels with a fast, secure, and easy-to-use payment gateway that can be fully integrated with the Guestline PMS.

The system is designed to be highly customizable and can be tailored to each hotel’s unique needs. It provides guests with a range of payment options, including credit and debit cards, direct debit, and even PayPal, so that guests can choose the payment method that suits them best.

In addition to GuestPay, Guestline's platform includes a Property Management System (PMS), Electronic Point of Sale (EPoS), Advanced Conference and Banqueting (C&B) Solutions, Distribution, and Central Reservation System (CRS) solutions.

In short, Guestline's platform provides hotels with a wide range of other solutions to optimise their operations and enhance the guest experience. The Guestline PMS, for example, allows hotels to manage their reservations, housekeeping, billing, and more, all from a single, easy-to-use interface. The EPoS solution allows hotels to streamline their food and beverage operations, while the C&B solution provides powerful tools for managing events and group bookings.

The Distribution and CRS solutions let hotels easily manage their online distribution channels, including online travel agencies (OTAs), meta-search engines, and direct bookings. These provide hotels with real-time inventory and rate management, seamless connectivity to distribution partners, and powerful reporting and analytics capabilities.

Overall, the Guestline platform provides hotels with a comprehensive suite of solutions to manage their operations and increase their revenue. Whether it's through GuestPay or one of the other solutions, hotels can benefit from the platform's powerful capabilities and industry-leading expertise.

There are several reasons why Guestline's GuestPay is an excellent choice for hotels looking to streamline their payment processes and improve the guest experience:

1. User-Friendly: Designed with the user in mind, providing a simple and intuitive payment process that guests can complete quickly and easily.
2. Secure: 100% PCI-compliant, ensuring that all payment data is securely stored and processed in line with the latest security standards.
3. Integrated: Fully integrated with Guestline's property management system, meaning that hotels can manage all aspects of the payment process from a single platform.
4. Cost-Effective: Offers competitive pricing, with no hidden fees or charges, making it an affordable solution for hotels of all sizes.
5. Customisable: GuestPay can be customised to meet the specific needs of your hotel, with a range of payment options and features available to suit your requirements.

GuestPay has received multiple accolades, including the Best Technology Product recognition at the 2021 UK Hospitality Awards, acknowledging its contribution to the hospitality industry.