 |
Brandon Lake, Western River Expeditions |
A few years ago, we started looking for tour operator software that would manage our bookings and integrate with core marketing initiatives. Our current reservation system was getting more and more unstable. On top of that, our one-man developer team had just suffered a mid-life crisis and decided to go into the business of selling anti-aging products. Needless to say, we needed change.
We had also started a new business, Moab Adventure Center. We operated about every type of day tour in Moab, Utah. Our reservations were all on paper. We were doing about 5,000 guests per year and as we were grew, our paper process was getting unreliable. In addition to frequent mistakes, we also had no way to do anything with our guest information because it wasn't in a database.
We needed tour operator software that would solve our problems. I made a long list of functionality I wanted. This included much more than just "make reservations." Here are a few of the items from the list:
- Function for both multi-day tours as well as day trips
- Make phone reservations faster (saving time to allow us to focus more on guests)
- Provide online reservations (to meet guest expectations and save labor costs)
- Automate follow-up in a personal way (we didn't have time to do it consistently)
- Allow hotels and agents to book online (our current process was cumbersome)
- Incorporate customer satisfaction surveys (we wanted immediate feedback)
- Generate more word of mouth from guests (we knew this was our best marketing)
- Get better reporting (with the right data, we knew we could make better decisions)
I couldn't find any tour operator software that did all this. I started talking to other tour operators and found they had similar challenges in finding tour operator software that fit their business. We decided to put together a team of developers to build a complete tour operator system. It was to be both reservation software AND a marketing system. We called it "Res-Mark." As the marketing features of the tour operator software were implemented, we immediately began seeing a difference.
- Our website started generating more leads.
- Responses to our follow-up emails starting filling in-boxes.
- Conversion rates doubled, increasing sales with less work.
- Online reservations started coming in, saving huge amounts of time.
- Immediate feedback from trips with automatic surveys helped our service.
- Customers were happier because of the communication they received.
The results were exciting! Using Resmark was like having another employee or two out there doing all this work. And with several advances since then, Resmark is now making our social media efforts so much easier and more effective. Overall, Resmark is now the key ingredient in our marketing strategy.
Resmark Systems Today
Today, Resmark Systems is used by tour operators ranging in size from 1 user to 50+ users. Companies of all sizes are seeing results. Check out some of the tour reservation system reviews from Resmark clients.
