The largest hotel franchising company in the world unveiled last week a technological way for guests to easily send gratuities from their portable electronic devices to team members of hotel and resort properties throughout the entire portfolio of brands in the United States and Canada.
Cashless Gratuities at Hotels: A Solution Looking For a Problem?
With approximately 9,000 hotel and resort properties across greater than 95 countries, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts claims to be one of the first major lodging companies to introduce a mobile tipping solution.
“Developed and managed by Béné, a leader in cashless tipping, the platform enables guests to easily tip hotel team members digitally via their preferred mobile device and is now available for adoption by Wyndham franchisees across all brands. It comes as a growing number of consumers adopt and show preference for digital payments, which according to consulting firm McKinsey, 82% of Americans are now using”, according to this official press release from Wyndham Hotels & Resorts on Wednesday, September 14, 2022. “Once a hotel opts-in and is setup on the Béné platform, guests can easily recognize the team member of their choice by scanning a QR code during their stay and choosing how much they would like to tip. QR codes are unique to each team member and tips are deposited daily either directly into their individual bank accounts or into the property’s account to be distributed with regular payroll. The platform accepts multiple forms of payment, including credit card, Apple Pay® and Google Pay™. Similar to other digital payment services, platform costs are covered by guests via a small transaction fee, leaving franchisees responsible only for basic marketing materials, which they can either order directly from Béné at a minimal cost or create themselves.”
Final Boarding Call
During the current 2019 Novel Coronavirus pandemic, many hotel and resort properties chose to limit the services they used to provide — for example, guests who stay in the same room multiple nights will not receive housekeeping services on a daily basis unless they specifically request it…
…so introducing a technological solution to ensure that providing gratuities to members of the staff seems almost like a solution which is in search of a problem — especially when Wyndham Hotels & Resorts could be concentrating on other ways to improve their brand.
Perhaps they should stick to the old-fashioned method of “guilting” guests into providing gratuities in envelopes for employees like Marriott International, Incorporated attempted to do back in September of 2014.
Oh, wait — that campaign ultimately failed, didn’t it?
Better yet: maybe Wyndham Hotels & Resorts should pay its employees more instead of relying on guests to do so?
Just sayin’…
Photograph ©2017 by Brian Cohen.
