Every hotel plays a vital role in its community. Like a pioneer tree being the first to colonise barren sands, a hotel’s success helps more things succeed and take root around it.

Whether a hotel’s visitors are there for a meal, a conference, a wedding, a night, a weekend or more, they create jobs and demand for nearby cafes, bars, restaurants, parking and public transport. Hotels support local suppliers and make their community accessible and more attractive for tourism and business.

While some hotels stand alone others gain strength working together. Elavon gets this and can meet the needs of independent hotels as well as larger, complex pan-European brands.

Always in front

The Sheraton Lake Como is a luxury four-star hotel with breath-taking views over Lake Como in northern Italy. As a part of the Marriott franchise, the hotel has been an Elavon customer since 2019.

“Our business is in Italy yet 90% of our revenue comes from international clients, so we prefer to work with a global player like Elavon,” says Elena De Santis, Director of Finance at Sheraton Lake Como.

The hotel processes more than 10,000 transactions per year, 70% of which are card based. This percentage is increasing year on year with the growing convenience of digital payments and guests having the option now to pay in their home currency, using Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC).

“DCC is very important to us and our relationship with Elavon,” says Elena. “DCC covers all the different home currencies our clients want to pay in, and Elavon covers the exchange risk.

“As a luxury hotel; it’s another service, another option for our clients” she adds.

The hotel’s finance team also relies on Elavon Connect, a cloud-based reporting tool providing real-time insights from anywhere. It’s this functionality that led the Sheraton to choose Elavon as its payments provider for its newest hotel Passalacqua, further along the shoreline of Lake Como.

“We wanted to have the same acquirer for reporting and we have a good relationship with Elavon,” says Andrea Caniggia, Financial Controller at the Sheraton.

“We had access to a dedicated Elavon relationship manager and could take advantage of the global economics negotiating with Marriott.

“We trusted that if there were any issues, Marriott and Elavon’s partnership could support us.”