Many UK customers (22%) feel that the travel industry could offer better payment services. But from our conversations with tour operators, we know that travel payments have long been a sore spot for them too.
For instance, during the pandemic, many operators were let down by their payment service providers (PSPs). They hiked up prices and withdrew payment gateways with little notice, leaving operators unable to process payments online (and missing opportunities to take bookings when they needed them most).
However, with a back-office system that lets you adopt new payment tech seamlessly, you can make travel payments less painful for everyone. Here’s how.
First, it pays to know what travellers are looking for.
As we talk about in 5 ways to personalise the tour booking experience (and increase profit), travel purchases are unique. They're often large, made by multiple people (such as in group tours), and booked in advance.
Because of this, travellers want to:
Split payments at the point of booking
Buy now, pay later
Pay in their own currency
Keep their details secure
For group bookings, being able to split the purchase across multiple people can make the experience much less stressful.
This is something that 35% of UK customers have needed to do, with 17% agreeing that splitting payments at the point of booking would make the process easier.
By partnering with a payment gateway and booking system that offers this, you can make sure you don’t miss opportunities to secure bookings from large groups.
BNPL has always been popular in travel, with many people securing their tours and experiences with a deposit, but it’s become even more popular since the pandemic.
You can offer this to your customers by partnering with a PSP that facilitates BNPL, and using a booking platform that automates payment reminders – like RezKit. This will nudge travellers to pay each instalment on time, every time.
For more visibility over costs, 66% of travellers would be more likely to choose a travel company that let them pay in their own currency.
Offering multi-currency payments clearly offers a competitive advantage, and is something that many payment gateways will let you do.
Almost a quarter of customers would ‘abandon cart’ when paying for a holiday online if they couldn’t trust the payment's security.
If you’re a smaller company trying to win over new travellers, offering secure payments is critical. Make sure to be transparent about how you’re using customers’ booking data, too.
Despite payment preferences evolving all the time, almost half of people surveyed for the Travel Technology Investment Trends report say they don’t successfully keep up with changing ways to pay.
If this feels familiar, here’s some advice on how to stay agile.
The tech needed to offer flexible travel payments already exists. You just need a back-office system that lets you integrate it with your booking processes.
Many legacy systems just don’t offer this flexibility, which can leave companies stuck if something goes wrong. Take the example of PSPs cutting contracts with tour operators during the pandemic. If you had a homegrown system during this time – one that needed money and expertise to update – then bringing in a new provider could have taken months.
With a flexible back-office system, you can innovate quickly and with lower costs. For instance, RezKit allows you to switch payment gateways with the click of a few buttons, so that you have greater control over your booking processes.
It’s also sensible to partner with multiple PSPs. This way, you can present your customers with options to improve their experience, build trust, and make sure that transactions still go through if one gateway is down.
RezKit simplifies this by connecting with Shuttle Global, a marketplace that brings all your payment integrations together and chooses the most appropriate one for each transaction.
This makes it easier to stay competitive, whether it’s by offering better conversion rates to global customers or by allowing them to split payments across more than one card.
Choose your PSPs carefully – and remember that it doesn’t need to be a trade-off between what works for you and what works for your customers.
In fact, many payment providers offer benefits to both groups. Trust Payments, for example, allows travellers to pay in multiple ways (from credit card to Apple Pay) and in multiple currencies. For operators, it offers features like chargeback representation and helpful data insights.
Delivering positive booking experiences is key for small tour operators to keep travellers coming back and profits rising.
That said, we know that many tour operators have legacy back-office systems that don’t let them evolve easily.
This is something we explore in more detail in our free whitepaper, Staying agile in an ever-changing travel industry: An opportunity for small tour operators.
Inside, we uncover why many tour operators struggle to adopt new technology, and share our advice for doing so cost-effectively and sustainably.
