Hospitality

Electrum's technology and corporate philosophy makes it unique in the industry. As business partners with its clients and their customers, Electrum is exclusively dedicated to providing innovative payment solutions while lowering cost and increasing market share. Electrum is experienced in providing direct bill automation in the hotel/motel industry
Electrum’s ECard payment service provides a complementary marketing strategy that focuses directly on building customer loyalty in business-to-business sales. We believe that loyalty is an important marketing strategy and a large determinant of profitability.

Direct Bill

Electrum provides direct bill automation in the hospitality industry through its ECard® services. ECard® reduces the overall cost of transaction acquisition, invoicing, remittance processing and collections. As a marketing tool, ECard® helps build market share and improves customer service.

Siesta Inns, a national motel chain with coast-to-coast properties, would like to increase its sales while at the same time reduce its payment acceptance costs. Siesta wants to implement a nationwide program that will allow its direct bill customers to establish a national account that would give them direct bill privileges at all of Siesta’s properties. To further increase sales, Siesta wants to change their discount offering from up front discounts to discounts based on actual invoiced volumes. In the past, they have offered discounts up front with no guarantee that the minimum volumes would be met. Now, with a nationwide direct bill program, they will be able to track the volume and provide discounts based on the actual invoiced amounts of their customers. The higher the volume, the higher the discount.
In the past, each Siesta property has had to maintain its own direct bill accounting system. The individual properties were having problems identifying whether the guest was actually authorized to charge on an account or even if the account was still open. They were sending out multiple invoices to the same companies every month, wasting valuable time and money, both theirs and the customer’s. They were not doing professional credit scoring on new accounts, which was causing higher than normal losses resulting from charge-offs. Finally, the accounts were not being aged or tracked, so Siesta had no idea of the amount of their total outstanding liability.
Siesta has records of previous customers, and uses these records to develop a list of prospective national customers whose employees frequent its properties. Siesta contacts these customers to enroll them in the national direct bill program. The customers already have a difficult time in processing employee expense reports. They, of course, want to provide employees that travel with food and lodging, but providing cash advances presents accounting problems and expense account abuse. Providing employees corporate VISA or other cards helps maintain better reconciliation, but since these cards can be used at non-food and lodging establishments, abuses are more of a problem. The customer decides to apply for a direct bill account with Siesta.
Siesta submits the customer’s application to Electrum. Following credit approval, Electrum issues Siesta Cards to the customer to be used for payment at any of Siesta’s coast to coast properties. The customer issues the Siesta Cards to all traveling employees along with the new travel policy that requires the employees to stay at Siesta Inns whenever possible. The customer knows that the more they stay the less they pay, so they now have an incentive to frequent the Siesta locations. Now, when the customer’s employees are on the road, they stay at one of the Siesta’s properties and use their Siesta Card as payment. Since the Siesta Card can only be used at Siesta Inns’ properties, travel expense abuses are better controlled. Because higher volumes mean greater discounts, the customer will encourage their employees to make arrangements to stay at a Siesta Inn as much as possible. The customer still makes reservations through Siesta’s national reservation center, only now they use their Siesta Card to make the reservation.
When the customer’s employees are checking in at Siesta, there is no searching for an account number or account code, or finding out if the account is still active. All they do is present their Siesta Card for payment. The check-in is fast and easy, only the verification of the card number using the credit card terminal and then the customer signs the receipt.
At the end of the billing cycle, Electrum generates invoices for all of Siesta’s customers. The invoices identify the date of the transaction, the amount of the transaction, the property used, and the name of the employee who made the charge. The customer previously received four hundred invoices from ninety different Siesta Inns. They now receive one consolidated, easy to understand invoice. The customer likes the idea of receiving only one invoice per month - so much so, that they have canceled their contract with Rode Hard Inn and are sending all of their employees to Siesta Inn.
Siesta Inns also likes the new service. Sales are up. Marketing is able to quantify their major corporate account business. Special promotions are directed at these accounts. Siesta also realizes true cost reduction in direct bill administration, as well as a reduction in the charge offs for direct bill accounts.