Hi Folks,
It still amazes me the excuses I hear from campground owners/operators of why they do not want ot take online bookings at their park. Especially if your online reservation service at your rv park is vertically integrated with your rv park/campground software. It is now easier than ever to start taking online reservations at your park. Herein lies the top 5 reasons plus one bonus excuse:
- “We want to offer over-the-top customer service and because of that we have to talk to each camper individually to fine tune their reservation.” Here is a tip for you, what you want as an owner/operator is irrelevant. Let me repeat myself. What you want has nothing to do with it. It is what the customer wants. They want to book online between 7:30 pm and 3:00 am. We have the numbers to prove it. Is your reservation desk open at these hours?
- “We don’t trust the Internet, it is not secure”. Please, yes Target and TJ Maxx had a breach, yes there is some risk. However both Target and TJ Maxx are doing millions of dollars over the Internet after their security breaches. You know why? It is what the people want!
- “We do not have the staff to monitor our internet bookings”. With BookYourSite™ you do not need extra staff. It is vertically integrated with Campground Manager Software®. You just click a button! In fact at our park we used to bring in a staff member to answer the phone calls in April for reservations. We have drastiicaly reduced our phone calls and saved a month’s salary on the employee.
- “We have never taken Internet bookings in the past and we see no need to now”. The market changes. Change with it or wither away and die. Because you have done things for 30 years and it has worked for you does not mean it will work for another 30 years.
- “Our current internet reservations provider is holding onto my money and will not pay me”. So fire them and change. No one said it is going to be easy. Investigate what is out there. We hope our BookYourSite™ option comes out on top.
- Bonus – “We want to control who gets in our park, we are not southwest airlines, we don’t take everyone”. Again that is changing in the business, but with the right system such as ours, you still have control over who gets into your park. If your online reservation software is integrated with your property management rv park software, customer filtering is easily accomplished.
So really in a round about way I am actually saying there is no reason not to be taking internet bookings! Unless your park is full 100% of the time, you have more than enough incentive to take Internet bookings for your park. I don’t mean online forms and having your camper typing their cc numbers on a non compliant page. Or worse yet, having to have your staff call the customer back long distance on your dime (and now you have to recoup an addiional labor cost on every reservation) just to get their credit card number.
Find the time and make the change. You will be happy you did.
PS. Check out my earlier post on cloud computing.
