Challenge

In 2012, Richard Aday took a trip to Puerto Rico and checked into a boutique hotel that lacked an online booking system. Over the next couple of days, Richard chatted with the hotel owner and general manager about how an online platform could support their operations. “I came back to Seattle with this vision of what we could do,” said Richard.

Upon his return to the US, Richard and his twin brother, Alfred—both of whom are electrical and computer engineers—launched ThinkReservations, a platform that enables hotel operators to manage online bookings directly and across channels, track data, simplify accounting, reconcile payments, and more.

The Adays knew payments are an intrinsic part of the guest experience, and hotel operators need to be able to provide a smooth payment journey for every guest. The platform enabled businesses to connect third-party payments to their ThinkReservations account, but this setup resulted in a slower, less secure onboarding flow than ThinkReservations wanted.

In 2022, the ThinkReservations team decided to enhance its customer experience with a better onboarding process. In particular, the team wanted to reduce friction, increase security measures, and increase efficiency for its customer support teams. Ultimately, each of these improvements served the platform’s overarching goal of helping hotel operators offer their guests a seamless payment experience and keep lodging businesses running smoothly.

“If there’s an application that the business has to fill out, that’s friction,” said Richard. “If there’s a salesperson that the business has to reach out to, that’s friction. The faster that we can get them onboarded, the better an experience they’re going to have.”

Solution

The ThinkReservations team knew about Stripe’s reputation for innovation and reliability from hotel operators, many of whom were already Stripe users. To improve onboarding, ThinkReservations opted to implement Stripe Connect, which enables hotels to easily connect their own Stripe accounts to the ThinkReservations platform. The ThinkReservations team selected a configuration in which Stripe hosts onboarding and manages risk. With this integration, ThinkReservations can offer businesses a simple, secure onboarding experience that protects sensitive data and provides clear pricing information—all of which reduces the frequency of customer support calls.

Results

Stripe Connect reduces onboarding time by 70%

Implementing Connect eliminated the friction businesses had encountered when setting up payments within the ThinkReservations platform. Hotel operators can start using ThinkReservations with Stripe-powered payments right away.

“Anytime a business uses Stripe, we know that they’re not going to have any issues connecting their Stripe account to ThinkReservations,” said Richard. “It can be done in the same day.”

Simple, secure process helps customers onboard easily

ThinkReservations’s Connect integration replaces its previous onboarding flow that required customers to manually enter credentials, which introduced both risk and friction into the process. The new flow makes onboarding easy for ThinkReservations’s customers.

Smooth onboarding process reduces workload for customer support team

The onboarding process via Connect has helped curb call volume for ThinkReservations’s customer support teams, saving them 120 hours per month—resulting in efficiency gains for ThinkReservations and a better customer experience for hotel operators.