Case Study: Seamlessly integrate hotel experience

The challenge

Part of the hotel organization's corporate governance includes strict controls on data security and privacy. As part of this policy, they needed to ensure that their payment systems and software were optimized to protect sensitive guest information from the risk of a potential data breach. They recognized that their current systems did not provide optimal functionality and made it difficult to ensure PCI DSS compliance validation. As a fiscally conservative corporation, they were also looking for ways to reduce the number of chargebacks.

The solution

After consulting with representatives from Elavon and Oracle Hospitality, the hotel organization decided to invest in Oracle Hospitality OPERA Cloud Property Management (PMS) along with Elavon’s PCI DSS compliant Fusebox gateway and Simplify application. They chose a cloud-based system because it offered the ability to easily push PMS software updates across properties, ensuring the latest patches and updates were always in place.

Delivering the solution required strict alignment between Elavon and Oracle Hospitality to confirm the technology was as future-proof as possible. The Elavon and Oracle Hospitality systems were integrated via the Elavon Bridge middleware to enable seamless payment processing. The Elavon Bridge works by translating transaction data between the two systems and routing communications from the Simplify application to the Fusebox gateway. Because the Elavon Bridge connects daily, updates are made when they become available, removing the need to coordinate or manage updates for the middleware.

The hotel organization also upgraded to all EMV-enabled payment devices, which were embedded with Elavon’s Simplify application. The Simplify application protects sensitive payment information by encrypting card data at the point of entry and during the authorization process. For additional protection, Simplify uses tokenization when returning data back to the POS system.

The result

Through close collaboration and coordination between the hotel organization, Oracle Hospitality and Elavon, OPERA Cloud was successfully installed at the front desk, retail outlets and food & beverage venues at 48 U.S. hotel properties. The cloud-based system was seamlessly integrated with Elavon’s core acquiring, Fusebox gateway and EMV-enabled devices that were installed with the Simplify application.

This full package of solutions helped the organization:

• More efficiently validate PCI DSS compliance validation
• Reduce fraud and chargebacks at the upgraded properties
• Achieve compliance with the card brand standards
• Reduce transaction processing time to roughly just four seconds, including receipt printing, with contactless EMV with Quick Chip

The investment to upgrade to OPERA Cloud, along with Elavon’s PCI DSS compliant Fusebox gateway and Simplify application, helped them assist a higher volume of guests in a shorter period of time and resulted in improving customer service and guest satisfaction.