Partnership between Siem Reap Tourism Club and Sathapana Bank to solve digital payment woes in Cambodia
Phare, The Cambodia Circus, has become one of the first Cambodian travel businesses to take advantage of a partnership agreement signed between the Siem Reap Tourism Club and Sathapana Bank of Cambodia to provide digital payment solutions for merchants and operators in the country
Craig Dodge: “Self-booking online is one of the fastest growing sales channels for tourism activities and attractions”.
Hot on the heels of the agreement being signed April 2, Craig Dodge, director of sales and marketing, Phare The Cambodian Circus, said that Phare Performing Social Enterprise សហគ្រាសសង្គមហ្វារ , Rezgo and Sathapana Bank have completed an online credit card payment processing integration that allows the attraction to offer travellers live ticket availability and instant confirmation, and accept credit card payments with direct deposit into its Sathapana Bank account without any middle-man or international bank transfers.
He said that this was significant because “self-booking online is one of the fastest growing sales channels for tourism activities and attractions”.
“With this kind of integration, travellers see what’s available, and can book easily and receive confirmations instantly. Operators can take control of sales, marketing and customer engagement with a convenient, secure, reliable online booking engine integrated with a local bank’s credit card processing.
“The icing on the cake is the higher margin from direct bookings. This new integration could open doors for scores of Cambodian tourism operators to benefit from online travel booking trends.”
Philip Set Kao, president of STC, said this partnership would help the club build a strong coalition of local merchants and support sustainable and smart tourism in Siem Reap.
Under the partnership, Sathapana Bank will provide digital payment solutions to enable STC members to manage, control and take care of their payments needs. With digital payment solutions such as the Sathapana Tutort mobile app, merchants are able to accept cashless payments via KHQR, Visa, Mastercard, Union Pay International, WeChat and Alipay from both foreign and local customers visiting Siem Reap.
The payments solution implemented by Phare, The Cambodia Circus, is being heralded as a breakthrough by CEO Dara Huot who said, that “after more than 10 years operating online bookings for Phare Circus, we are still amazed by the struggles and obstacles for tourism activities providers to go online, accept online booking and payments and provide exceptional customer services and confidence to the tourists who might book online”.
Dara Huot: “Still amazed by the struggles and obstacles for tourism activities providers to go online.”
In a Linked In post, he said the reality of the matter is “it’s a lot of hard work to set up an online booking engine (that works) which connects to payment gateways (that work and do not reject payments because of some mysterious reason)” as well as the willingness and commitment of tourism activities providers to provide “impeccable customer service” for online customers.
He said that if more tourism activities providers in Cambodia were able to offer better online booking experiences, “it would show potential travellers to Cambodia that there are in fact so many things to experience, taste, do, see and shout about – and they should plan for longer stays in the destination”.
He said that what was needed “is an aggregator/consolidator for capacity/inventory management across different online sales agents/marketplace/platforms”.
“We have learned so far that most online travel agents or sales channels do not have and do not want to invest in an API connection to the booking engine we have. An aggregator/consolidator for capacity/inventory management would be super handy,” he said.
