The past few years have shown the hotel industry the importance of keeping up with the changing technology landscape—and even staying ahead of the curve, if possible. To that end, Germain Hotels, the owner and operator of a network of 18 properties with 2,584 guestrooms across Canada under the Le Germain, Alt and Escad banners, has made Canary Technologies’ Digital Authorizations software the standard across all of its properties.
With Canary’s Digital Authorizations product, Germain Hotels properties will be able to send third-party guests a unique link so they can enter their credit card information through a Payment Card Industry-compliant and secure online interface instead of filling out paper or PDF credit card authorization forms. Each hotel will also have access to Canary’s comprehensive anti-fraud software and dashboard to keep track of each guest’s digital authorization online.
“With the introduction of Canary, we are very pleased that our guests and employees now enjoy the same professional credit card authorization experience across all 18 Germain properties,” said Charles Bureau, vice president of IT at Germain Hotels. “Digital Authorizations saves our staff a lot of time by making it easy to create and send secure authorization links to guests.”
Bureau said Germain selected Canary because it is incredibly user-friendly, flexible and compatible with single sign-on.
Improved Processes
Canary’s Digital Authorizations solution is fully compliant with PCI standards that all businesses must adhere to if they capture, process, transmit or store credit or debit card information. Most paper credit card authorization forms are not PCI compliant, which means Canary’s Digital Authorizations product gives Germain Hotels a more secure solution that provides a more streamlined overall guest experience.
Digital Authorizations also helps merchants avoid the errors and fraud often associated with the process of collecting credit card information on paper forms: hotels using Digital Authorizations have reported up to 90 percent decreases in chargebacks, according to the company.
“Digitizing credit-card authorizations is a relatively easy way to improve payment security and reduce chargebacks and fraud,” said Canary VP of Sales DJ Singh. “Guests don’t miss those paper forms, and hotels see immediate ROI. We look forward to working with Germain Hotels to improve security and efficiency while enhancing the guest experience.”
The product is part of Canary’s mobile web end-to-end Guest Management System. The company also offers Contactless Check-in, which allows guests to check-in virtually without exchanging credit cards, IDs or registration forms; Contactless Checkout, which allows hotels to understand when guests will leave their hotel and boost their reviews; Guest Messages, which allows guests and staff to easily communicate via text message; Upsells, which allows hotels to generate $100,000 or more annually in upsell revenue; and Digital Contracts, which increases staff efficiency and bookings. Its latest introduction is Digital Tipping.
"The hospitality industry has been struggling with staffing shortages for more than a year now. Throughout this time, we have been helping our customers increase staff efficiency with products like contactless check-in, contactless checkout and guest messaging with [artificial intelligence] replies,” said Harman Singh Narula, co-founder of Canary Technologies. “But with the labor shortage dragging on, we wanted to do more to help our customers. So we recently added a new Digital Tipping solution to the Canary platform, which can help hoteliers better attract and retain talent. Digital Tipping can help staff make up to $5 more per hour, making hotel staff roles more competitive with jobs in other industries. We're really excited about it."