At the beginning of July, we’re right in the thick of what travel agencies and tour operators across the northern hemisphere know as the summer high season. The confluence of warmer weather, brighter days, and school summer holidays has turned would-be travellers into actual travellers, driving up the travel industry’s revenues to heights unreachable in the depths of winter. But just because revenues are climbing doesn’t mean they couldn’t climb higher, and there are a number of travel payment technologies that could see those revenue molehills turn into revenue mountains.

Giving Customers the Travel Payment Technologies They Want

Practically any travel site you care to name can accept a single lump sum payment from a Visa or Mastercard credit/debit card, and while it’s still essential to make that process as smooth and pleasant as possible, it’s nowhere near enough by itself at this point. Travellers want the ability to structure their own payments, now, whether that means splitting them across the entire group or paying in increments. To meet customer demand, Airbnb developed their own split payments mechanism, while payment service providers can offer incremental payment options for operators aiming themselves at holidaymaker market segments with a lower average income.

Here, There, Everywhere: Travel Meets Global Payment Technologies

So, opening up your card payments to things like split and incremental payments will earn you some fans, but it’s far from the only thing you can do. Why restrict yourself to card payments? In a payment technology ecosystem that’s increasingly mobile-focused, it’s more and more vital to adapt to payment methods beyond the traditional. That can mean the obvious stuff like Apple and Google Pay, but it can also mean things like WeChat Pay and Alipay, whose meteoric rise in China has seen over 400 million people making mobile payments in the last year alone. If your business is sending tourists across the globe, it pays to be global!

Travel Payment Technologies for Intelligent Growth

So, expanding your capacities is key to making the most of the high season, but it’s still as important as ever to protect yourself against malicious activity. With travel industry fraud predicted to cost in excess of $25 billion by 2020, it’s more important than ever to take steps to defend against it. That means investing in technological solutions that can analyse your business’ payments for potential fraudsters and stop it at the root. Luckily, there are more than a few companies out there that offer solutions for precisely this, it’s just a matter of finding the one that best fits the needs of your business.

Travel operators are quite literally responsible for running global businesses. Global businesses need global payment solutions, and in this case, that specifically means payment technologies targeting the travel industry. By investing time and resources in expanding the range of payment methods available to travellers, you stand to make the absolute most of the summer high season, and by dedicating some of that time to security, you can even clamp down on fraud while you’re at it. Not bad for a summer job.