Calypso Star Charters - Rezdy Customer Success Story

Get a Jawesome Amount of Bookings with Rezdy

Natasha Becker is the Office Manager at Calypso Star Charters in Port Lincoln, South Australia. Calypso Star Charters are fully government licensed and eco-certified, offering an exciting encounter with sharks inside a cage that ensures the safety of both sharks and divers. To get to the sharks, guests are taken to their location by the Calypso Star 2, an advanced boat with WiFi and live footage streamed from the cage to the saloon.

On a daily basis, Natasha wears many hats. She manages the office and oversees all marketing activities, charter operations, and human resources tasks.

Under her management, there is a stream of bookings pouring in. However, Natasha felt that the booking tools they had in place were making her job much harder than it had to be.

“We had separate systems for online, offline, and agent bookings, which made it very difficult to manage a live inventory. Offline & agent bookings had to be done manually, and we would have to update our availability on the online system. It was very time consuming, and there was too much opportunity for overbooking charters.”

“We had separate systems for online, offline, and agent bookings, which made it very difficult to manage a live inventory.”

She also realised that the software in place was built more for ecommerce businesses than it was for tour and activity operators.

“It was a shopping cart setup, not an actual booking system, so it didn’t give us the functionality we needed. For example, we couldn’t access it externally, and there was no customer management because no database was maintained in the system.”

Natasha knew that a tool which allowed her to efficiently manage live availability was necessary to improve Calypso Star Charters’ booking process.

“If we didn’t do anything about it, it could have been very detrimental to the business in terms of overbooking charters. Our reputation would suffer.”

“If we didn’t do anything about it, it could have been very detrimental to the business in terms of overbooking charters.”

She began to look for a booking software that was more suited to the needs of an activity based business. When she thought she had found one, she gave it a try.

“We tried a booking program, but it was absolutely terrible and very expensive, so we reverted back to the old system while I conducted research for around 6 months on different booking systems.”

Not wanting to rush into anything, Natasha took her time to make sure she had all the information she needed.

“I went through product demonstrations, checked out what functionality was available, what costs were involved, and figured out what was going to be the best fit for our business.”

After her extensive research, Natasha felt that Rezdy was the best match for Shark Cage Diving.

“Rezdy gives us the ability to have offline, online, and agent bookings all in the one system. And the pricing is very competitive.”

“Rezdy gives us the ability to have offline, online, and agent bookings all in the one system.”

Natasha made her decision and began implementing Rezdy straight away.

“Once we got set up, we just had to go through putting in all of our forward bookings and once we knew everything was up to date, we went live with it.”

She was pleased to find that her staff were also happy with the way that Rezdy worked.

“I found that it was very simple to train new staff in the use of it and they were very pleased with the system and the ease of using it themselves.”

With Rezdy, Calypso Star Charters have booking software that is tailored to meet her business’ needs.

“I like that Rezdy is simple and easy to use – both for our customers, and for agents making direct bookings. We can access it from anywhere, add unlimited users, and get most things that we need out of it.”

Because Calypso Star Charters have one source of the truth to which they can refer when it comes to their bookings, their relationship with their agents have improved.

“Rezdy has improved the relationships that we have with our agents. Now that almost all of our agents are on Rezdy’s Agent Desk, they don’t have to call us, and we don’t have to process the booking manually.”

“After the second month of implementing Rezdy, we had to change the plan we signed up for because we were receiving so many online bookings.”

Natasha has also seen their bookings rise to the point that she had to adjust her Rezdy plan in order to accommodate them.

“After the second month of implementing Rezdy, we had to change the plan we signed up for because we were receiving so many online bookings.”

Natasha was also impressed by how Rezdy’s team handles feature requests.

“In putting suggestions to Rezdy, we’ve had a very positive response and have seen the majority of things we raised implemented already. A couple of suggestions will take longer because programming is involved, but I am really happy with the response that we get from the Rezdy staff in taking it on board and trying to work towards a resolution.”

Based on her experience with Rezdy, Natasha would gladly recommend it to other tour and activity businesses. Natasha has referred another two operators on to Rezdy already and they too have been pleased with the system.

“Rezdy has been very beneficial for our business in terms of time and cost, so I can see that it works quite well for our industry. I would definitely recommend that other tour operators give it a go.”