Sector could recoup Covid losses through optimising payment strategies

The study, ‘The Great Payments Transformation’​, which surveyed senior payments professionals, showed a company turning over £1m could potentially boost revenue by up to £250,000 a year.

The survey found the industry was seeing higher than average losses due to poor payment gateways, with nearly half (46%) reporting they are losing between 11% and 25% of revenue compared to an average of 34.75% businesses in other surveyed industry reporting this level of loss.

Making changes now

While changing payment strategies could help recoup losses the sector faced during the pandemic, in order to avoid losing customers and revenue, 87% of the professionals said businesses needed to make changes to their strategy before the end of 2022, with 31% of those believing the changes must be made by the end of H1.

If the changes are successfully implemented, more than a third (36%) of professionals said they could see a 7% to 10% boost in revenue.

The survey also revealed hospitality professionals to be more confident in their data usage than other industries. A quarter (25%) rated their teams’ ability to use data to optimise payment strategies as “excellent” compared to just 15% across all industries.

A further 69% rated them as good (little room for improvement) compared to 46% overall, and none said there was a lot of room for improvement, compared to 11% of all participants.

Significant barriers

However, while gaining insights from data is good in the hospitality sector, the burden of regulation is posing a significant barrier to investing more in optimising their payments strategies with over half (54%) citing this as a core issue (this is higher than other industries). A further 44% cited changing regulation as a top concern for payments performance in 2022.

Preparing for the future, nearly half (48%) of those from the hospitality industry expect subscription payments to be the trend that will take hold this year. This suggests after the pandemic, hospitality businesses have been more likely to pursue creating connections and repeat custom.

Paid subscriptions are a good opportunity to facilitate this form of ‘paid loyalty’ and we’ve seen leading hospitality brands in the UK adapting subscriptions into their strategies, such as coffee subscriptions.