Clarion Hotel & Suites Winnipeg reduces fraud and refunds with Canary |

Harry Haira has been the general manager of Clarion Hotel & Suites Winnipeg – owned by Choice Hotels – for the past four years. Opened in 2000, the hotel has 139 guest rooms, ample space for meetings and events, a spa and additional facilities. For most of their 20+ years of operation, Clarion staff uses paper credit card authorization forms to collect payments from guests. But in recent years, Haira and his team have begun to look for a better solution.

“We sent paper or PDF credit card authorization forms back and forth with our guests by fax or email,” Haira said. “At some point, however, we realized that there needed to be a better way to handle sensitive guest information than paper forms, which could easily be stolen or misused,” he continued. “Repayments and fraud have also been significant problems for us, as people can feel quite impudent when confronted with a paper form that is more difficult to verify than a secure digital solution.

After a brief discussion of the options, it didn’t take long before the Clarion Hotel & Suites Winnipeg management team decided to work with Canary Technologies‘PCI compatible Digital permissions solution for collecting sensitive credit card information.

Approved provider of hotels for digital permits

“The fact that Canary is an approved provider of Choice Hotels is the main reason we decided to consider the digital resolution solution for the platform,” Haira said. “But we knew this was exactly what we needed when the Canary team demonstrated how simple the system is to use and how we can increase security by checking cardholder fraud,” he continued.

After seeing the digital permit solutions in action, the Clarion team in Winnipeg decided that Canary provided the right way to modernize the credit card authorization and collection process.

Easier credit card authorizations with Canary

Khaira and Clarion Winnipeg’s team were pleased to find that Canary’s digital resolution solution was indeed as easy to implement as Canary’s team described. In total, the implementation of the solution and staff training took less than 30 minutes.

In addition, Haira and his team found it much easier to monitor the status of payments once the hotel switched to a digital resolution solution.

“Before Canary, we did a lot of persecution for guests to make sure we had the right information before they arrived at the hotel. “More than once, guests arrived and we didn’t have a credit card,” Haira said. “Once we switched to using digital authorizations, this problem has completely stopped and we can now easily track authorizations and send reminders to customers through the Canary platform.”

Noticeable reduction in reversed payments and fraud

Haira cited the return of payments and fraud as one of the main reasons why his property wants to withdraw from the paper forms for credit card authorization.

“Fraud was a constant problem for us before we introduced Canary to our property,” Haira said. “Since we started using digital authorizations, we have experienced much less reversed payments and fraud, and I believe this is due to the fact that we now have a more secure solution. “People are much less likely to try to commit fraud when they realize that we can verify their information quickly and easily.”

Clarion Hotel & Suites Winnipeg achieved everything it set out to do when it moved from paper credit card authorization forms to Canary’s secure online solution. Fraud and payment reversal are reduced, security is improved and the team is more efficient in collecting payment information than ever before.

Asked if he would recommend Canary to other Choice hotels and medium-sized properties, general manager Khaira fully agreed.

“I would absolutely recommend Canary, especially to other Choice Hotels properties,” he said. “It was an incredibly useful solution that helped us prevent so many headaches and run the hotel more smoothly. Any type of accommodation can benefit from such a solution. “

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