Case Study: Dropbear Adventures

This manual way of processing bookings was costing Hana’s business time and momey.

“I had to be on the phone to take every single booking, and I would miss bookings because I was on the phone already taking a booking. Sometimes, I would have to email people up to 15 times before the booking would be completed.”

It also left Hana in a frenzy.

“The lack of professionalism was frustrating. When people asked me what their booking was I wasn’t able to just do search for their name or order number. When I wanted a report of on something it took me hours and there so much room for error I couldn’t trust any of my staff to help me with it.”

Hana realised that to grow Dropbear Adventures to its full potential, she needed to automate her booking system, and take it online.

“If we hadn’t done anything about it, we wouldn’t have been able to grow the business. Being an adventure product, paying our cars’ insurance is already such a massive cost. We couldn’t afford to hire another person just to take bookings.”

At first, Hana used an OTA to accept online bookings. However, she found that it was causing more problems than it solved.

“We were sending a lot of traffic to the OTA but we weren’t getting a lot of bookings back, because once they got to the site, customers were able compare us to other tours in the area. They would even call back and ask us to match deals that other operators were providing. In the end, I was dealing with more phone calls rather than it being a streamlined process.”

While she was receiving online booking enquiries, the partnership still created too much administrative work for her to make it worthwhile.

“There was no way to pull a manifest, so I was still having to put all the bookings into an Excel spreadsheet manifest system. I spent a lot of time having to constantly update and look at the manifest. It was not automatic at all.”

After meeting with Rezdy, Hana decided that it would be a healthy partnership due to them sharing the same values in the tour and activity sector.

After seeing what the system could do, Hana was sold.

“The top Rezdy features I like are;

•      The ability to manage resources;
•      The live availability being bookable on our website;
•      The automated emails that used to take up so much of my admin time (ticket sending, reminders, follow up emails); and,
•      The ability to manipulate the manifest to show what I need it to show.”

Hana started to implement Rezdy into her business.

“I employed a few backpackers to help me put future bookings into the system. This allowed me to spend my time setting it up. Even though we did keep two records for a while to be doubly sure things were done properly, we slowly stopped taking bookings on an Excel spreadsheet when we were confident with Rezdy.”

The switch paid off. With Rezdy, Dropbear Adventures was able to get booked way in advance.

“Since Rezdy, my business has skyrocketed. Rezdy has kickstarted our future bookings. We went from being booked 2 days before the trip to being booked 2-3 weeks in advance.”

Hana is able to plan out her business with confidence thanks to Rezdy.

“Rezdy makes me more proactive and less reactive. Up to 6-8 weeks in advance, all of our trips already have minimum numbers. This means I’m able to guarantee departures, so I can confidently organise stock, roster people on, and make sure the cars are ready.”

These days Hana spends less time on admin, and more time on perfecting her tour products.

“Rezdy frees up more of my time so I can bring more business in rather than manage bookings. Before, it took me about 40 minutes to administer a booking, whereas now it’s more like 5 minutes.”

By offering real-time bookings through Rezdy, Dropbear Adventures is able to drive more direct bookings.

“Rezdy solidifies our place in the market and allows us to be less reliant on agents. We’re getting a lot of our bookings direct, because it’s now so easy for our guests to book online.”

Dropbear Adventures is also better able to compete for market share with Rezdy.

“Rezdy is a fantastic tool that actually gives us the market power to compete with people who have in some cases over 400 travel agents working on high commission targets which we are not able to afford to pay.”

Hana has also found working with the team to be a positive experience.

“Rezdy is not just a booking engine behind our site – it’s a company that we can grow with. Rezdy’s team is very open to change, feedback and suggestions, and are really developing the product around their clients.”

Hana encourages other adventure tour operators to consider Rezdy to manage their bookings.

“Small businesses have a fear of letting go of responsibilities because we love that personal touch, but you just have to adapt to be able to compete in today’s market place.”