By Storm Steen
I have grown up in the tourism industry. Life is always an adventure and meeting the new, wonderful people that come along with it is something I have always enjoyed. The hours of admin that it takes to meet these people, on the other hand... that can drain the passion out of your career choice.
After a four-year stint as the tour director of a holiday beach resort, I swore I would never take another job in hospitality again. Almost a decade later, this industry is 80% of my client base.
When I first started in the industry, I remember heaps of paperwork on my desk. They contained the tour information for bookings at the resort. My job, as tedious as it may seem, was to market the resort for these tours, send them all these papers, follow up, and then turn ALL this information into a booking. Sound familiar?
Over the years, there have been popular platforms pop up that ease this process to some degree. Bookings.com, Safari Now and various other booking platforms have now taken the tedious paperwork and endless phone calls out of the mix. The problem is that this is only half of the work.
The discovery that changed the game
With travel and tourism clients from all over the country, as well as my own marketing events, I found myself working a lot with various booking platforms. Automating bookings saves businesses a lot of time and money, so it seemed like the only logical option.
With many of these systems, it was a continuous battle for payment, spooning out ridiculous commission fees and waiting forever for customer service to help with even the smallest of requests. There was hair pulling. There was swearing. There was stupid amounts of time wasted on following up on everything. Until one summer’s day...
Stressed out and sitting in my living room, I received a phonecall from a friendly voice. I was dealing with some pretty high-rolling clients at the time, so I was used to getting a new phonecall about some “all new innovation in booking systems”, every second day. I gave the standard “send me an email” response and put down the phone.
Pop! There was the email – Q2B Venue Management Solution. As we all do, I glazed over it lightly and forgot about it, until the next morning...
The friendly voice was back on the phone. I had to admire her persistence, so when she offered to come over to my house for a free demo, I thought “Why not?”.
The following Wednesday, the friendly Q2B voice was outside my door, equipped with a smile and her laptop. She came in, sat with myself and my business partner and started her demonstration and talk. Out eyes got wider with excitement, with every word that she spoke...
“No commission” - What? We would keep ALL the booking fees with just a monthly payment for the platform.
- “Unlimited event listings and ticket sales” - This just keeps getting better and better.
- “No long term contracts” – Freedom!
- “Unlimited users” - Yay! Our company can grow and we can share the work load.
- “Attachments” - No more time wasting with menu sending or indemnities and paperwork on the day.
- “It's all online” - So we can access from anywhere, any time and on any device!
- “Easy online or EFT payments” - And no more manual invoice updating. Can I get a ‘Yes’?
- “Venue calendar” - So we can see the events and deadlines coming up.
- “Built in function sheets” - We basically have no work to do, when it comes to the booking and planning process. This is awesome!
As you can see, the friendly Q2B voice (who I know know as Hendriette) didn't quite have us at hello, but we couldn't wait to sign those papers, before she said goodbye.
Testing the waters
Before recommending the Q2B platform to clients, I tested it out in my own business.
So. Simple!
Where had Q2B been when I had those piles of paper on my desk, as a tour director!
I wanted to shout Q2B's name from the rooftops. My clients found bookings easier, it saved massive amounts of my time and the money was coming straight into my bank account. No more waiting periods and unanswered emails.
On the odd occasion that I did have questions, Hendriette was just a quick email or phone call away, and everything was sorted before I could say “Help”.
After my life was changed, I started spreading the word. One of my recommendations was to a venue that does accommodation, events, conferencing and the lot! They couldn't believe how Q2B accommodated for not one, but ALL of these! There is literally not one other platform I have found that can do this.
I even managed to get a national adventure activity destination to try out the platform. Not only did it make my job, marketing them, a lot easier, but they saw tremendous results too!
But that's not all
Q2B integrates with Online Travel Agencies, giving venues the opportunity to display their real availability to various role players, for easy booking purposes, using their Venue Link. This means that venues can team up with local tourist destinations to compliment each others services and target an even wider customer base. I thought that was genius!
Over the next few months, I am stopping at various travel and tourism destinations, all over the country. I am so excited about my travels and have bookmarked my Q2B page so that I can show them all how it works. Q2B really is a game changer for the tourism industry.
