Contactless Ordering and Payment at Your Sporting Event
The technological age of sporting events is here. It’s all-star? Contactless ordering and payment systems.
Contactless ordering and payment systems increase sales, build brands, and improve customer experiences. No other simple, low-cost innovation can benefit your next sporting event more than contactless commerce can.
COVID-19 has driven the widespread adoption of contactless systems, and there are more benefits to these innovations beyond protecting your customers’ health and safety. In fact, contactless ordering systems were growing in popularity long before the pandemic started, and they continue to enhance businesses. The truth is, this technology adds incredible value for both the customer and the vendor.
Read on to learn how contactless purchase systems can enhance your next sporting event.
How You Can Incorporate Contactless Ordering and Payment at Your Sporting Event
Contactless ordering and payment systems are exactly what the name implies—they’re methods for customers to conduct transactions without physically exchanging cash or cards with service providers.
The technology comes in a variety of forms, including:
- Scannable QR codes – Customers use smartphones to scan QR codes in order to read menus, see prices, make purchases, and access a variety of other information about products. QR codes were invented in 1994, but their full potential is just starting to be understood in the United States.
- Website ordering – Customers can execute various real-world transactions through company website portals. Whether it’s buying a product or digitally checking in to a waiting line, customers and businesses can both save time with website ordering systems
- Pay-at-table technology – Pay-at-table options enable customers to conduct transactions from their tables (or, in the case of stadiums, from their seats). They sometimes come in the form of smartphone applications and sometimes in tabletop computers. Pay-at-table contactless ordering and payment systems have become increasingly sophisticated, allowing customers to do things such as easily splitting group bills.
Why Use Contactless Ordering and Payment at Your Sporting Event?
Now you know the how of these systems, but what about the why? Frankly, because it’s here to stay.
Here are two reasons why.
A Higher Customer Demand for Contactless
The pandemic ushered in an incredible surge in technological innovations in the hospitality industry. Now, as shelter-in-place orders are far and few in-between, customers have come to rely on the new tech features at their favorite entertainment venues, sports arenas, and restaurants.
Did we say rely? We mean, expect.
A survey by FanFood confirms it, with 70% of users saying they felt the availability of contactless payment options at venues was “very important or extremely important.”
Unbelievable ROI for Businesses
You care about your customers and their experience—but you also care about your bottom line. Contactless ordering and payment systems have allowed hospitality companies to experience huge profit increases by streamlining and digitizing systems.
Need examples? Here are just a few hospitality organizations that saw exceptional monetary growth thanks to contactless systems:
- Stone Brewing achieved a 23% increase in the amount of money spent per check
- Hilton Omaha saw a 240% increase in food and beverage revenue
The Vegas Test Kitchen used contactless ordering systems to reduce overhead and operate with 50% less staff.
3 Key Benefits of Contactless Ordering
Contactless ordering and payments can enhance your customers’ experiences and your business’ profits in numerous ways. Here are just a few.
#1 Increase Sales
It’s a no-brainer that nobody enjoys standing in lines, especially if it means missing their favorite team’s big score or goal-line stand. The full extent of the aversion to waiting in line, though, may surprise you.
A 2019 study by Oracle Corporation found that U.S. sports-goers would buy 66% more food and beverages if waiting times in lines were shorter.
Even if all the other benefits of remote, contactless ordering systems were discounted (though they absolutely shouldn’t be), a 66 percent increase in sales speaks for itself.
#2 Increase Customer Safety
Contactless ordering improves customer safety in two ways. It:
- Reduces crime – A National Bureau of Economic Research paper found that implementing the Electronic Benefit Transfer system caused a 9.8 percent decrease in the overall crime rate. The same principle is assumed to apply to any reduction in the carrying of physical cash.
- Limit potential exposure to COVID and other transmissible diseases – Keep staff and customers healthy by limiting direct physical interaction and making it easier to maintain social distancing.
#3 Provide Invaluable Data Insights
Improved data collection is powerfully useful in both the macro and the micro. It helps operators better serve customers by:
- Determine best price points for products
- Develop new products to fill in gaps that might otherwise go unnoticed
- Uncover the most effective marketing strategies
Improved data can be used to make any number of smart adjustments. Inbound marketing can be measured much more effectively than old-school advertising options such as billboards and commercials.
Win Big with GoTab’s Contactless Ordering System
Contactless ordering and payments can do a lot to improve your sporting events—both for you and your customers. They are increasingly being implemented around the globe in order to increase the sports-viewing experience and streamline service. You just need an MVP to help you take your next event all the way.
Enter GoTab.
Founded by restaurateurs who understand the value of both efficiency and human interaction in the service industry, GoTab makes implementing a contactless ordering system simple. You don’t need any new hardware or software and we can set operators up quickly and easily so you can be ready for contactless ordering by your next big event.
Sources:
- FanFood. Survey Shows Growing Preference Towards On-Premise Mobile Ordering. https://www.fanfoodapp.com/blog/fanfood-consumer-mobile-ordering-survey-2021
- Intelligencer. Nobody’s Going to Sports in Person Anymore. And No One Seems to Care.https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/07/nobodys-going-to-sports-in-person-and-no-one-seems-to-care.html
- National Bureau of Economic Research. Less Cash, Less Crime: Evidence from the Electronic Benefit Transfer Program. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w19996/w19996.pdf
- Oracle Corporation. Stadium of the Future. https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/dc/stadium-of-the-future-report-final.pdf
- The Stadium Business. INTERVIEW: HOW E-COMMERCE IS TRANSFORMING THE HOSPITALITY SALES MODEL. https://www.thestadiumbusiness.com/2021/05/17/interview-how-e-commerce-is-transforming-the-hospitality-sales-model/
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