Amish Country Hotel

In Berlin, Ohio (also known as the heart of Ohio Amish Country) there is a cozy yet luxurious hotel that lives in a unique tourist destination. The Berlin Encore Hotel & Suites is a full-service vacation resort that opened its doors in 2018 thanks to the Conn family, Mike and his sons Jeff and Braden. Opening a hotel – like any large-scale venture – takes years of planning, and room for the unexpected. Luckily, when it came time to choose a property management system and payment processing solution, the family put their new business in good hands with two of the hospitality industry’s most innovative, reliable, and secure platforms.

Finding the Perfect Partnership

The Conn family’s first choice for a property management solution was SkyTouch Hotel OS because of its cloud-based capabilities and rich features, including systems to manage room rates, reservations, housekeeping, billing and much more. The ability to manage your hotel from anywhere, eliminating the need for expensive onsite servers and hardware allows staff to manage and operate many properties at once. Live 24/7 customer support along with onsite and remote training options ensure staff comfort and confidence.

SkyTouch Technologies is a long-time partner with Shift4 Payments. The joint payment solution is secured by Shift4’s industry-renowned payment gateway technologies and offers unmatched functionality and stability. This includes their world-class EMV solution, tokenization (a technology they are credited with inventing), and PCI-validated point-to-point encryption (P2PE). Shift4 also brings to the table several unique features that are designed specifically to meet the payment needs of hospitality environments, including tokenized reservations.

In 2018, Shift4 Payments announced the expansion of their offering and introduced a complete payment solution, which provides payment processing, merchant services, and payment terminals. When combined, these services provide significant savings to merchants. SkyTouch was excited to pass these benefits on to their merchant customers, so they began offering Shift4’s enhanced solution as an option with their integration.

A Complete Solution

Complete payment processing integration from Shift4 Payments and SkyTouch Technology includes:

• Secure payment gateway
• SkyTouch Hotel OS integration
• Competitively priced merchant services
• EMV devices with lifetime free replacement warranty
• 24/7/365 customer support
• One point of contact for all payments needs

Choosing the Right Solution

After receiving the complete payment solution offer from SkyTouch and Shift4, Braden Conn weighed the business’s needs, how the hotel could benefit and described the factors that went into the decision:

“It was really a pretty easy decision. We were able to get a whole lot more for less money, thanks to the money that we saved from our monthly transaction fees and the EMV devices that were included when we signed up. We started saving before we even opened our doors. And since we’ve been using Shift4 and SkyTouch together, having everything under roof has been really nice.” – Braden Conn, Co-owner and Operator, Berlin Encore Hotel & Suites

Immediate Benefits of All-in-One Payments

The implementation process was simple, fast, and seamless. Since all the payment hardware and software they needed came from SkyTouch and Shift4 themselves, the hotel didn’t have to worry about going to any outside parties for their payment terminals, key injection, gateway services, or business management software. To top it off, they were able to save time with the added convenience of having to make only one call to support any of their payments needs.

«We are incredibly proud of the integrated package that we were able to offer the Berlin Encore Hotel as they launched their business, with tangible savings and benefits that could be seen from day one. We look forward to many years of success as they are able to deliver a memorable guest experience while having the peace of mind that their payments are taken care of by the most secure and seamless integration.» – Jared Isaacman, CEO, Shift4 Payments

Ultimately, the Berlin Encore was able to open their hotel and start using all the features and technologies that the payment partnership had to offer. Shift4 Payments and SkyTouch Technology delivered unmatched value with their solution, which covers the entire payment process, from check-in to well after check-out.