Challenge

Moon Holidays specializes in crafting personalized travel experiences for travelers from the Middle East exploring Thailand and Southeast Asia. Every itinerary is handcrafted by local Hebrew and Arabic-speaking experts who offer insider access to places and experiences that don’t appear on typical tour maps. By speaking both the literal and figurative language of their audience, Moon Holidays has become Thailand’s go-to travel agency for tourists from the Middle East.

In 2023, Moon Holidays began looking for a more flexible and scalable payment partner to support its expansion across Southeast Asia. Booking costs range from 6,000 to 20,000 Israeli shekels ($1,700 to $5,700) and must be collected before travelers arrive. Moon Holidays needed a payment experience that would help customers overcome hesitancy around paying a large sum to a company they hadn’t encountered before. Moon Holidays’ analytics indicated that most customers do their planning on their computer but tend to pay from their phone. That meant the company needed a checkout experience that worked just as well on a smartphone as it did on a desktop.

In addition, the company needed flexibility to accept payment in Israeli shekels or the traveler’s preferred currency. “We knew from experience that people hesitate to pay in a foreign currency, especially when it’s for a big-ticket purchase like a vacation,” said Zahi Bela, general manager at Moon Holidays. “They want to see shekels on their card, not baht.”

Moon Holidays also needed a way to scale its operations more efficiently. As Moon Holidays’ growth accelerated, its manual processes started to become a bottleneck. Sales teams were forced to quote and collect payments across separate systems, leading to delays, errors, and rework. The finance team had to manually reconcile deposits, balances, and upsells across thousands of invoices each month.

With its previous payments and invoicing solution, the team had to manually generate new invoices and re-enter payment details if customers decided to upgrade their room, adjust their travel dates, or add new experiences. This process created particular friction when cross-selling and upselling experiences while customers were in-country, such as adding day trips or spa services after arrival. Moon Holidays was looking for a more automated process that would save its team time and provide a more seamless customer experience.

To help its customers manage the high cost of a holiday, Moon Holidays also wanted the ability to break payments into monthly installments. However, Thai banking regulations prohibit international customers from making installment payments, requiring Moon Holidays to find an alternate solution.

Solution

Moon Holidays chose Stripe because it met a wide range of needs: offering local currency pricing to build trust, enabling mobile-friendly checkout for large up-front payments, supporting installment plans, and automating invoicing to reduce operational overhead. With Stripe Payments, the company was able to present all charges in Israeli shekels while settling funds to its Thai bank account in baht, ensuring customers saw a familiar currency on their statements without introducing operational complexity. Moon Holidays also implemented Stripe’s Hosted Invoice Page, which lets it easily and securely collect payments from customers, along with the Payment Element to turn on additional payment methods without any coding.

The ability to brand invoices and payment pages with the Moon Holidays name helped reassure travelers that they were working with a reputable, well-established company. And because most customers complete their payments on mobile, Moon Holidays could use Stripe to make it easy for customers to pay from anywhere, whether booking their trip at home or adding new experiences while on vacation.

To eliminate operational bottlenecks, Moon Holidays integrated Stripe Invoicing directly into its internal quoting system. Once a sales rep finalizes a package, an invoice is generated and sent automatically, eliminating time-consuming and error-prone manual data entry. Updates to bookings, such as room upgrades or added excursions, trigger a new invoice with the correct balance, giving the customer a seamless, one-click payment experience.

To support longer booking windows and meet customer demand for payment flexibility, Moon Holidays added Stripe Billing to offer installment plans. With Billing, Moon Holidays can break payments into monthly installments tailored to each traveler’s timeline. Stripe’s UI building blocks mean that Payments integrates seamlessly with Invoicing and Billing to provide a cohesive customer experience while saving development time.

Results

Revenue grows 6x in one year with Stripe partnership

With Stripe powering its payments, billing, and invoicing, Moon Holidays doubled its customer volume and increased its monthly revenue year-over-year by 600% while laying the foundation for growth into new markets across Southeast Asia.

“Our team used to handle 25 customers a day, and now we serve 50 customers a day easily without adding headcount,” said Bela.

75% of customers pay with their mobile device

Thanks to its mobile optimization, Stripe makes it simple for 75% of Moon Holidays’ customers to complete their transactions on their couch at home, from the airport when making last-minute upgrades, or from their hotel when booking additional experiences while in Thailand.

“Stripe lets us meet our customers wherever they are,” said Bela.

Sales and finance teams save 125 hours per month

By integrating Invoicing into its internal systems, Moon Holidays eliminated the need for sales and finance teams to manually generate and track payment links or worry about manual reconciliation. The quoting and payment process now runs through a single automated workflow, saving 5–7 minutes per quote or 125 hours per month. The finance team scaled its support, growing invoice volume from 750 to 1,500 invoices per month without adding headcount.

“Before Stripe, we had to work across two different systems, which had the potential to create delays and mistakes. Now everything is automated, so once our sales team finishes the quote, Stripe takes care of the rest,” said Bela.

Stripe Invoicing automates the upsell process

When a customer wants to book a rooftop dinner, add a spa day, or upgrade their accommodations, the sales team can easily make the change without worrying about payments. Stripe Invoicing initiates the new invoice without requiring payment details again.

“We just send the invoice and they pay. It’s one click, and it’s done,” said Bela.

20% of customers now pay with installments

Since adding Billing, 20% of Moon Holidays’ customers have chosen to pay in monthly installments. With installments, customers who book months in advance get more manageable payments, helping Moon Holidays stand out in a competitive market.

“Once we started using Stripe Billing, we immediately began to see results. It helps us build trust and encourages repeat business. We’ve also seen some customers recommend us to their friends because we had installments as an option,” said Bela.