Online bookings comprise almost 63% of the travel and tourism segment’s revenue every year. A good Hotel Payment System will let you efficiently manage online reservations. Automating reservation processes with a reliable hotel booking system reduces the risk of manual errors and losses in business.

Furthermore, having a streamlined booking system in place helps hoteliers provide a more intuitive booking experience to guests.

As technology continues its rapid advance across all industries around the world, hospitality is really beginning to see the benefits. Hotel management software has come a long way in helping hoteliers improve the way their business operates, and there is little doubt as to its transformative impact. Here are a few advantages of implementing a modern hotel management system.

Saves Big Time on Administrative Tasks

The right Hotel Payment System will significantly reduce the time you spend on manual administrative tasks. The software does the majority of the work and lets you divert your time to more crucial tasks, such as serving your guests. The software will take care of every department at your property including front of the house, revenue management, housekeeping, and others. If you pick the right solution, you can make significant time savings across almost every area of your business, thereby boosting your staff’s productivity and satisfaction.

Develop Strong Relationships with Your Guests and Increasing Online Visibility

A more streamlined check-in and check-out experience will enhance your guest happiness. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg anything from improved communication and other services will also boost guest loyalty. Choosing the best software will likely mean an increased retention level in both guests and staff.

The right software is a crucial factor to develop your online presence. You can integrate guest-facing software like hotel booking engines, chatbots, and a guest portal with your website design, enabling you to instantly accept online reservations and make guests feel confident in their choice to book directly with you. Google values and assesses the user experience on websites, and those that offer a better user journey and interface will rank higher on Google searches and other search engines.

Implementing an Effective Revenue Management System

Most Hotel Payment System includes pricing tools and other features to optimize revenue. Gone are the days of having just a peak season price and a low season price if you’re not setting prices in a more strategic manner, you’re losing out on bookings and not making the most of the guests that do a book. You should be able to create and customize product rates, rate dependencies, and special offers and rules such as package rates.

Managing Distribution Functions and Increase in Bookings

A modern hospitality booking system should be able to easily connect to a channel manager so you can advertise across many channels and easily promote your business across the industry’s OTAs and third-party booking services. It provides real-time information that will help you grow your number of reservations and spread awareness of your property.

Every feature in your hotel management system should work to improve your overall number of bookings. Whether you intend to explore new markets or boost bookings in the low season, the right software system is all about optimizing and maximizing what you can achieve. Revenue management and a direct booking engine are two obvious features that will help you in this regard, but everything from integrations to smart reporting and automation will ultimately contribute.

Accurate Regular Reports

Hotel management, finance, and revenue teams will have access to accurate daily earnings reports thanks to data-savvy Hotel Payment System. Meanwhile, operations and marketing reports will help you and your team to make reliable, data-driven decisions across your business. If everything is in the cloud, these invaluable metrics are at your fingertips whenever you need them, without the need for time-consuming manual exporting and compiling.

Analyze Your Customer Base

Market and guest segmentation is another important benefit of the right guest management software system. The GM and Marketing Managers can keep track of the different types of visitors, with key demographic breakdowns such as age, gender, and nationality. This data allows you to make informed decisions on your marketing strategy and increase the long-term revenue trends of your business.

Direct bookings are referred to hotel reservations that guest books by connecting directly with a hotel and not involving a third party. Direct bookings are usually booked using the hotel’s website, by dealing with the sales team either by phone, email, or walk-in.

Direct booking is profitable for you and deals with the hotel directly. From the hotel’s point of view, direct booking is advantageous as they will have the opportunity to gift the guest and build up loyalty with the guest from the time guest enters the hotel website. Also, hotels will have all the customer data, so that they can contact them for campaigns.

The various benefits of direct booking are:

1) Room Selection Categories – Having a direct link with the hotel, allows you to select the room type from various available room categories. It also becomes easy for you to analyze the room price and see the various amenities that each room type provides. You will also get a glimpse of room structure and be able to decide which room type is feasible for your stay.

2) Cancellation – The cancellation charges while you book directly with a hotel is better than the booking through a third-party vendor. Also, you can be sure of the cancellation charges at the time of booking as they will be listed on the website. So, you will get the actual picture of the cancellation condition.

3) Booking Changes – Once you decide on a specific room type and book your stay, at some time you might prefer to change the room type. In such a case you can easily make this without any complication. On request to the hotel customer support, you can easily specify your requirement and get the room type changed based on the availability.

4) Updated Room Availability Information – When you are booking directly with a hotel, you can see the actual update on the room availability. You can also see the room type that are available on a specific date. So, it is easy for you to involve indirect booking and book the room type based on availability.

5) Customer Support – If you have any specific queries at the time of booking, you will get 24 X 7 customer support to clear them. The customer support will help you with a feasible solution and they would also give personal tips if you are looking for recreational activities. So, you can do your booking at ease.

6) Booking Flexibility – If you have any specific interest or condition, the hotel will help you out with it. For example, you require a room near a swimming pool, or you are going with a couple of families and you require rooms next to each other. In such cases, you will get the flexibility to choose your room, and hotel staff will be happy to serve you on your special request.

7) Avail of any Special Offers – When the hotel announces any special offers on a specific season, you can avail of that only on direct booking. In this case, it is profitable for you, and can check out available offers on their website. Based on your availability you can go ahead to avail of that offer and can have a happy stay at the hotel.

8) Easy Payment – Nowadays, the hotel offers their customers all payment types like credit/debit card payments, Google Pay, Paytm, etc. so that you can pay at your ease.

9) Streamlined Flow – When users interact using the hotel website interface in a streamlined flow and a single platform by filling personal information, hotels reduce booking abandonment and it also boosts conversions. Usually, a faster checkout process is directly correlated with more sales.

10) Minimum Redirects – The hotel website usually optimizes visitors at the bottom of the funnel and takes away disorderly redirects to form booking templates. Guests will book when there is an easy interface and navigation.

11) Loyalty Programs – Many hotels provide loyalty points for booking with them. Users get points and when they sign-in for their next booking, they can use the guest’s loyalty IDs to unlock the rewards they have. This will enable a guest to keep connected to the hotel again and again.

In our time, almost all businesses that take their business activities seriously have their own online sales portals. Online business activities have increased these days due to the recent pandemic, the Covid-19. However, here business owners or company managements will have to take adequate and absolute care and attention. The precaution is to secure the personal data of the customers. Data theft has become endemic because of the widespread use of the internet and computers for various personal matters, including banking transactions. It’s the professional obligation of businesses to protect the personal data of their customers. Hence, a secure payment gateway is a vital factor as far as companies that do online transactions are concerned. That said, merchants must make sure that the payment system they install has perfect coding. The best bet for this is to buy it from a company that has technical perfection. You can find such technically perfect companies through an internet search.

When there is a secure payment platform, merchants will be able to monitor the transactions flawlessly. That said, almost all contemporary businesses are active as regards global transactions. Besides, because of the recent pandemic, online transactions have become more convincing and constant. Due to this situation, all businesses should go for the payment gateways, which will be beneficial as far as both the businesses and customers are concerned. However, merchants should pick a secure payment gateway, which has perfect encryption. Besides, the coders must be experts and must have flawless technical training background.

The payment gateway facilitates online merchants to process the payment cards such as debit cards, credit cards, etc. Thus the gateway augments the sales. When there is a perfectly coded payment gateway, the possibility of credit card cheating will be less. Businesses will be able to bring down the online cheating possibility. When customers enter the website and select a product, they will have to do the payment procedures. For this, they must give the payment card details. This data collection is the first step. Immediately, the encoding takes place through the web browser, and these details will reach the merchant. Here, the gateway takes over the action and will pass the transaction details to the payment workstation the merchant uses for contacting the bank. These details will reach the card affiliation. The related bank either approves or just denies the payment. The processor sends the details to the purchaser and merchant. When the transaction is over, the merchant and customer will get the transaction success message.

There are some significant factors that merchants must consider while installing the payment gateway. They must pick a suitable payment flow. Such a system will become essential for all companies in tune with the growth of the company. One can direct the customers to another secure platform or can use an embedded platform within the website. You can select in line with your practical need. For some merchants, the escrow system will be beneficial. For sure, customers will approve this provision. If your business demands this situation, you must go for it. However, the method must be customer-friendly and not time-consuming. In brief, your prospective buyers must feel secure so that they will come to you again for shopping. Practically, a secure payment gateway is a mediator platform that makes sure that the client data is encrypted and secure.

That said, you must buy the payment platform from a company that has all the relevant technical qualifications and experience. The software system must be flawless and customer-friendly. Customers must not get any difficulty while purchasing your products and during the payment process. They must be able to do the entire process of selection and paying within a few seconds. The entailed processes that start from the customer’s payment must be uncomplicated. Customers must be able to purchase your products at ease. Remember, this easiness is the main factor that will prompt them to visit your website again and again whenever they need similar products or services.

RedHat OpenShift and Kubernetes are containerization tools that many businesses use to become more effective, agile, and scalable. Containerization is a word for a single software package containing an application code and the configuration files, libraries, and dependencies necessary to run it. Having everything bundled together in one “container” allows the software to run without issues on any system platform or cloud.

Aside from this beneficial portability, containerization enables you to avoid the errors and bugs that occur when you transfer code developed in one computing environment to another. You can also create and deploy the software applications faster.

What is Red Hat OpenShift?

Red Hat OpenShift is an open source containerization software product from the Red Hat software company that runs on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system and Kubernetes. It is a cloud-based platform that operates as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) on public and private clouds and works on hybrid cloud and multiple cloud deployments. You can choose between managed and self-managed options and get various services with OpenShift for your enterprise business. These include the Kubernetes platform, Docker container images, and many exclusive OpenShift enterprise features.

Cloud platforms like OpenShift can help developers to create, innovate, and deliver software applications faster. They also enable operational consistency and efficiency since you can operate clusters and automate the software life-cycle management across architectures and frameworks. Additionally, with Red Hat OpenShift, you can get increased security.

What is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is an open source containers-as-a-service (CaaS) platform that Google designed and developed. It enables developers to automate containers and use container-based virtualization to upload, run, organize, scale, and manage applications. It uses nodes—real or virtual machines— and a collection of processes known as a control plane to form clusters that work together as a single server. The control plane decides which applications to run and container images to use and assigns the tasks of running the applications and workloads to the nodes. Each node operates in its own Linux environment and runs pods that contain several containers.

The pod clusters—a pod is a group of containers assigned to one node— of Kubernetes have the same number of resources, perform in the same network, and are replicable. That gives them powerful processing capabilities. You can replicate any container in a pod to make it work like another, and that lets the containers produce simultaneous updates and support load balancing for applications. With Kubernetes, you can also get more space, consistent and faster processing speeds, and application isolation.

What are the differences between RedHat OpenShift and Kubernetes?

Some of the main differences between the RedHat OpenShift and Kubernetes tools are as follows:

• OpenShift is a containerization software product that offers a paid platform service. Kubernetes is a containerization project, and you can download its open source code for free from GitHub.

• The OpenShift platform contains the Kubernetes platform and features. Kubernetes is a stand-alone service and does not contain OpenShift services.

• OpenShift is a paid platform service and comes with a subscription that you have to renew periodically for your cluster. The price goes up as the cluster expands. Kubernetes is a free service that you can download from GitHub.

• You can install OpenShift only on select operating system platforms, such as the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system, Red Hat CoreOS, and CentOS. On the other hand, it is possible to install Kubernetes on almost any Linux distribution operating system such as Ubuntu, Debian, and others since it is an open source framework.

• OpenShift updates pods with DeploymentConfig, which does not allow concurrent updates. It is possible to make concurrent updates with deployment objects in Kubernetes.

• You can use router objects for external access to OpenShift. For external access to Kubernetes, you can use ingress objects.

• OpenShift has stronger and stricter security policies than Kubernetes. You cannot run a container as a root and also many simple container images in OpenShift. The security level is easier to maintain with Kubernetes.

• OpenShift has fewer software releases every year than Kubernetes, which can generally have around four releases per year.

• You can use native networking solutions in OpenShift. For Kubernetes, you may find it necessary to use third-party plug-ins for networking.

Mobile wallets are a secured and quick method of payment. Now, the majority of people prefer using mobile wallets instead of cash or cards. Apple Pay is among one of those mobile wallets. 51% of the world’s population is now considering contactless payment methods, consist of mobile wallets.

While you register with Apple mobile wallet, make sure your device is suitable. Apple mobile wallets can only work on iPhones, Mack books, iPads, and Apple watches and will not support old gadgets such as iPhone 5s.

First, you have to download the newest version of ios, watchOS, or macOS according to your device to register your Apple mobile wallet. Finally, you must check if your credit card is registered to the Apple Payment Application. Verify if your card issuer has a contract with Apple. It will not be a problem as Apple mobile wallet remains a partner with various topmost card issuing companies. But it will not harm to verify twice.

Here is detailed guidance on how to get started with Apple mobile wallet on your Apple device.

1. Process of Setting up Apple Payment App on iPhone

Your Apple mobile is a gadget that you can carry with you everywhere, so you must set up the mobile wallet in it first.

• Download the Wallet application on your device.

• There is a + button on the screen’s top right corner. Click on it.

• Therefore, click on “Continue”.

• Select your card type if it is a credit or debit or Apple card. If you have an Apple card, then you do not have to select the choice.

• This step is for those who have a new card. Scan the upper portion of the card with your device’s camera, or you can enter details of the card such as name and card number manually. After, click on “Next”.

• Add the card’s security number and expiry date. Then click on “Next”.

• Go through the terms and conditions cautiously and agree to them.

• Verify the entire process by email or text, or call. Add the verification code when asked. Then tap “Next”.

• Your data will get verified by the card-issuing company or the bank. After completing the verification process click on “Next” to use Apple mobile wallet.

2. Process of Setting up Apple Payment App on your iPad

• Start by opening the settings on your iPad.

• Scroll through the options and click on “Wallet & Apple Pay”. Then tap “Add card”.

• On the pay set up a display, click on “Continue”.

• Scan the upper section of the card with your gadget’s camera, or enter the card information such as name and card number physically. After that, click on “Next”. This step is only for new cards.

• Enter the expiry date of the card and security number. After that tap “Next”.

• Read the terms and conditions and tap to agree.

• The app will verify by sending an email or text or making a call. Enter the verifying code which the app just sent when asked and proceed to “Next”.

• The card issuer or the bank will authenticate your data. After authentication, click on “Next” to make payments with your card.

3. Process of Setting up Apple Payment App on your Apple Watch:

• Open your iPhone’s Watch application. Move to the My Watch option.

• Click on “Wallet & Apple Pay”. Therefore “Add card”.

• There, on the pay set up a tab, click on “Continue”.

• In case of a new card, scan the front part of your card with your Apple device. You may also enter your card description, like name and card number, manually. Then proceed to “Next”.

• Enter the card’s validation date and security numbers. Then click “Next”.

• Go through the terms and conditions and then agree.

• Choose an authentication process either by email or call, or text. Enter the authentication code when asked. Then go to “Next”.

• Your data will get justified and confirmed by your bank or the card-issuing company. Then proceed to “Next” to begin with your Apple mobile wallet.