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The first and last five minutes
In hospitality, the arrival and departure bookend the memory of a stay and both are payment-heavy moments. Guests judge them on speed, perceived control, and trust.
When hotels design for choice across channels, card-on-file trust, and friction-free flows (instead of legacy MOTO - (Mail Order/Telephone Order - and fragmented acquirers), they see higher satisfaction, fewer chargebacks, and a lower total cost to accept payments, not just lower rates.
“Don’t just negotiate product pricing; best-practice design saves more than rates ever will,” notes Dave Wheatcroft, SVP European Sales at Planet.
Behaviour has shifted... fast
The kiosk and the mobile phone have quietly reset check-in norms. Studies suggest 70–80% of guests choose digital or mobile check-in when available, a preference now visible even in luxury properties.
As Jane Pendlebury, CEO of HOSPA, puts it, “Guests want choice: kiosk, mobile, or a person, depending on their mood that day.” Familiarity from Quick Service Restaurants and airports has made kiosks feel natural; hotels benefit from these learned behaviours.
Rising digital wallets are the other tailwind. Hospitality lagged retail, but usage is climbing, particularly with Chinese travellers using Alipay and WeChat Pay. As strong customer authentication (SCA) normalises, more guests are comfortable storing credentials, enabling the ideal state: payments guests don’t notice but remember.
Why payment psychology breaks
Complexity, not intent, is the culprit. Multi-brand groups inherit PMS/POS/booking engine sprawl and multiple acquirers. Revo Hospitality Group, for example, grew from 30 to 260+ hotels since 2019, now managing nine acquirers. The result: token silos, pre-auths that don’t travel across channels, and reconciliation headaches.
OTAs and virtual credit cards (VCCs) add an identity and settlement gap. Properties struggle to match deposits, and post-stay charges can feel “unfair” to guests which trigger disputes. Meanwhile, MOTO transactions persist in too many flows. They’re costlier, more vulnerable to fraud/chargebacks, and already under pressure from PSD2/SCA with PSD3 likely to tighten further.
“Chargebacks never go away, but they shrink when you replace MOTO with proper pre-auth and authentication,” says Tobias “Tobi” Caesari, SVP Global Enterprise at Planet.
Designing for trust and control
The psychology is simple: speed reduces the pain of paying, and control reduces anxiety. The operational blueprint is nuanced:
- Unify tokens so the same credential captured at booking powers kiosks, mobile, front desk and F&B. No re-presenting cards.
- Replace MOTO with SCA-backed pre-authorisations that follow the guest. Clear, itemised digital receipts post-stay reducing loss-aversion flashpoints (“Why was I charged for breakfast?”).
- Centralise and automate VCC handling so OTA flows don’t swamp properties.
- Staff shift from cashiers to hosts, stepping in for service, not card capture. Lobby space improves too, kiosks free square metres for revenue-generating experiences.
Robert Kennedy, Managing Director at Revo, is pragmatic: “We’ve been slow to adopt kiosks, but guests now expect them. The tech has to be right and the tokens must talk across vendors.
Revenue and cost levers hiding in plain sight
Optimising payments is a bigger lever than shaving a few basis points:
- Total cost to accept = scheme fees + acquirer/gateway + operational time + chargebacks. Fixing flows beats rate-shopping.
- When implemented in a guest-friendly, compliant way, Pay in Your Currency (PYC, previously DCC) can be a meaningful revenue driver.
- Fraud tools (risk scoring, step-up SCA) prevent disputes before they start.
- In some markets (e.g., parts of Germany), the cashless trend is accelerating, plan for terminal-light, not terminal-free. Resilience still matters for late-night walk-ins and F&B.
AI now, agents later
Today, AI earns its keep in the back office: RPA for reconciliation, VCC processing, dispute prep, and pre-arrival offers. Tomorrow, agentic bookings will route demand from new surfaces (superapps, assistants). To win there, hotels need API-clean, SCA-aware payment flows and tokens that travel across every channel.
A one-page action plan for this quarter
- Map the journey end-to-end (OTA, brand.com, kiosk, app, front desk, F&B). Decide where one credential should persist.
- Kill MOTO wherever feasible. Move to SCA-backed pre-auth + card-on-file. Assume PSD3 will push you there anyway.
- Unify tokens across systems (gateway ↔ PMS ↔ kiosk ↔ app) so pre-auths “follow” the guest.
- Automate and centralise VCCs; treat OTA as a distinct, owned flow with SLAs.Deploy fraud screening on brand.com; tune 3DS/SCA to cut friction without opening risk.
- Design for choice: kiosk/mobile for speed; a human path for high-touch. Train teams as hosts, not cashiers.
- Instrument for DCC (where appropriate) only after the flow is compliant and guest-friendly.
- Measure what matters: queue time, % digital check-in, MOTO share, chargeback rate/€ value, wallet %, OTA/VCC handling time, NPS at payment moments.
At Planet, our promise is practical: any payment, any channel, any market through deep integrations with PMS, booking engines, mobile check-in and kiosks, plus flexible acquirer partnerships. We help hotels reduce front-end complexity, prevent disputes, and lower total cost, not just rates.
Payment psychology is hospitality psychology. Design the flow guests barely notice and they’ll remember how easy you made it feel.
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