Nestled between Mt. Niseko-Annapuri and Mt Yotei, with easy access to the powder-filled runs of Japan’s most famous ski resort, AYA Niseko condominium hotel offers contemporary, luxurious accommodation and amenities for international skiers.
While Niseko’s abundant snowfall attracts powderhounds from all over the world, AYA Niseko offers a ski-in, ski-out property with guest services.
Only 70m from the Ace family quad lift in Niseko Tokyu Grand Hirafu), AYA Niseko’s discerning guests can choose between stylishly rooms, sumptuous apartments, exclusive penthouse suites - for the best views of Mount Yotei, or luxury ski-in residences. And, after a long day skiing, they can hand their equipment to the hotel Ski Valet, and head straight to the spa or to the traditional Japanese Onsen bath, where tired muscles can be revived by water imbued with natural salts and minerals is tapped from geothermically heated hot springs over 700m deep. That’s some après ski!!
AYA Niseko at a glance
Proven payments solution offers enhanced payment experience for international guest
In their peak winter season, 90% of AYA Niseko’s guests are from overseas, and many book directly through the website. Payments from international guests incurred high fees, for both the resort and guests, and were a key concern. AYA Niseko wanted a payment solution that offered both reduced transaction costs and a simple and secure payment experience to their guests.
Since implementing Flywire in June 2022, the payment experience has improved greatly. International guests can now pay for their stay at AYA Niseko in their local currency, using their preferred payment method, all within the booking platform. The payment process has become incredibly seamless and the number of inquiries was reduced.
To manage their bookings, AYA Niseko uses RoomBoss which has an outstanding reputation for performance in winter regions. Through a seamless integration, AYA Niseko is now able to use Flywire to take payments and deal with any irregularities.
AYA Niseko were aware of Flywire when they started their search for a new payment partner. Flywire is used by many other Niseko travel businesses, who were extremely happy to validate that Flywire was the right fit for AYA Niseko.
Solving international refunds headache
When the pandemic hit in 2020 and international travel was shut down, the AYA Niseko reservations team was faced with canceling a large number of bookings and refunding all the associated payments. Their previous international payment provider experienced a significant setback due to this situation.
AYA Niseko’s legacy provider only allowed refunds on payments made less than three months previously and were not willing to change this even in light of the pandemic. As most payments being refunded at that time had been made by guests over six months before, this meant the AYA Niseko team had to process each refund manually. In a process that took several months to complete, the team contacted each guest individually to ask for their bank details and then initiated each refund via an international bank transfer. As well as being incredibly time consuming, the process they were forced to use had significant security risks.
It was clear they needed a better payment platform - one that allowed refunds to be processed quickly and easily. Flywire has achieved this, and more with automatic netting functionality without any short time limit for refunds, supported by an account manager dedicated to AYA Niseko’s account.
Results
“We’re very glad we implemented Flywire. When the pandemic hit international bookings decreased significantly, but when the borders opened up again, we received more bookings than expected. At around the same time, we started using Flywire so, Despite the influx of payments, not only was the process far smoother but Flywire also helped significantly reduce our payment fees. ”
