Kensington Tours Taps Ingenico to Provide Mobile Payments Edge to Luxury Travel

It would be easy to dismiss the travel agent as a notion belonging in the dim dead past, like video arcades, bookstores, or shopping malls. Sure, examples of all of these still exist, but they’re almost like a relic more than an actual viable business. Don’t tell that to Kensington Tours, however, as our friends at Ingenico recently tipped us off that the company has stepped up its operations to incorporate Ingenico’s payments tools.

Now, the reports note, Kensington Tours will be able to offer up Ingenico’s payment mechanisms for end-to-end payment coverage, allowing customers to not only build tourist experiences to match their interests, but more readily pay for these booked tours as well.

Kensington Tours has already experienced rapid growth, reports note, with each of the last few years seeing at least 25 percent growth over the preceding years. Much of this is due to the highly individualized and personalized nature of Kensington’s offering; travelers are sure to have what they need at every point of the travel process.

With Ingenico, the highly-personalized travel offerings are seamlessly paid for, which smooths out an already-smooth process and improves the customer experience that much farther.

Improving customer experience is one of mobile payments’ biggest paybacks there is. Since it makes the customer happier overall with his or her decision to purchase from a company with an excellent customer experience, it improves the likelihood that said customer will return the next time they’re in need of that company’s goods or services. By making it easier to pay, Kensington Tours has cleared the way for further growth as not only do new customers find their way into the fold, but old customers come back for more travel experiences later. Plus, the old customers will do some of the marketing heavy lifting for Kensington, telling their friends about how great the travel experience was.

Kensington Tours’ move to incorporate Ingenico systems here will likely pay off going forward as the company realizes larger quantities of repeat business and more newcomers coming in with tales of how well it went for their friends. It’s just one more example of what mobile payments can really do.