About Packrafting Queenstown

Packrafting Queenstown is an adventure tour operator based in Queenstown, New Zealand, offering guided packrafting experiences that combine hiking and paddling through some of the region’s most remote river environments. Packrafts are small and light enough to be carried inside a backpack while hiking, yet when inflated become fully functional river rafts, allowing journeys that would otherwise be impossible.

This unique approach enables the team to explore rivers that are too remote or too shallow for traditional kayaks, creating highly specialised experiences with varied trip structures, inclusions, and booking lead times. With seven years in operation and a team of around 10 staff, the business delivers a wide range of tours for both international visitors and a strong local outdoor community.

As the business grew, making more use of features to manage products, pricing, and demand became essential to maintaining operational efficiency and supporting long-term growth.

“It’s perfectly designed for tourism businesses. In every aspect of running the business, it fits in so well. It doesn’t add value in one space, it adds value across a number of different ways to your business.”

Huw Miles Packrafting Queenstown

THE CHALLENGE

Early use of Rezdy: Establishing the right foundation

Packrafting Queenstown launched with Rezdy from day one. At the time, many local operators were relying on older booking systems that were costly to maintain, difficult to manage, and often unpopular with customers. Starting with Rezdy gave the business a modern foundation and avoided the need to migrate systems as it grew.

In the early stages, however, the team was still learning how to get the most out of the platform.

Key pain points

Limited use of reporting tools made it harder to see how far in advance different products typically booked
Reduced visibility into booking patterns made it challenging to plan advertising spend and allocate resources with confidence
Pricing structures that passed booking fees directly onto customers risked discouraging online bookings
Some guests requested manual alternatives, creating friction in the booking process

As demand diversified across products and customer types, these early learnings highlighted the opportunity to make deeper use of Rezdy’s reporting, pricing, and automation tools, setting the stage for a more data-led, scalable way of operating.

THE SOLUTION

Expanding Rezdy: Smarter pricing, reporting, and product management

As Packrafting Queenstown grew, the team began unlocking more of Rezdy’s capabilities to support planning, pricing, and day-to-day efficiency.

Reporting quickly became a central part of how the business made decisions.

As the team explains:

”The reporting stands out. It gives a much more informed picture of the business and helps us plan for healthy, long-term operations.”

With product-level lead-time insights, the team can now see when different experiences typically book, giving them clarity on when to activate advertising and where marketing spend delivers the strongest returns. This visibility supports more confident resource planning and a more measured, long-term approach to growth.

Rezdy’s product management tools have further reduced friction as the business has expanded its range. When a new tour follows a similar structure to an existing one, products can be duplicated and adjusted rather than built from scratch, significantly reducing setup time and enabling faster responses to demand.

Pricing flexibility has also played an important role. Using Rezdy’s Extras, Packrafting Queenstown can keep base prices accessible while offering optional add-ons such as gear hire or alternative participation options. This allows different customer groups to be served effectively without inflating prices across the board, while still supporting incremental revenue.

Automated emails handle confirmations and key customer communications in the background, reducing manual follow-up. Flexible website embedding and customisation ensure the booking experience remains aligned with the brand while making availability clear and bookings simple.

Key Rezdy features that strengthened planning and efficiency included:

Reporting and lead-time insights: improved visibility into booking behaviour and supported confident planning
Product duplication tools: reduced setup time for new experiences
Extras and pricing flexibility: enabled base pricing with optional add-ons
Automation and guest communication: streamlined confirmations and reduced manual workload
Website embedding and customisation: strengthened the direct booking experience

Support has also been a consistent enabler as the team expanded usage across the business.

As the operator notes:

“Even if you’re not a ‘computer person,’ Rezdy is approachable. The live support is excellent, plain-English answers in real time, so you can comfortably delegate booking-system tasks to team members and know they’ll get immediate help when they need it.”

Huw Miles Packrafting Queenstown

Fast, plain-English support via live chat has given the team confidence to delegate booking-system tasks internally and resolve questions quickly, without slowing down operations.

THE RESULTS

With Rezdy: Growth, efficiency, and long-term confidence

Today, Rezdy supports nearly every aspect of Packrafting Queenstown’s booking and operational workflow, from online sales and payments through to reporting and product management.

Since 2018, Packrafting Queenstown has achieved:

More than 1,540 total bookings completed
Approximately 440 bookings in the past 12 months (highest annual volume to date)
Annual bookings growing from around 30 in the first year to over 430 in 2024
Online booking adoption increasing from around 70% in the early years to approximately 98% today
77% of bookings now fully paid upfront
Revenue growth of more than 900% compared to the first year of operation

Operationally, the impact has been substantial. Centralised bookings, payments, and customer information have reduced admin workload, eliminated manual workarounds, and enabled the entire team to work from a single source of truth. All staff now use the system daily, supporting smoother communication and more consistent delivery on the ground.

Customer experience has remained strong throughout this growth, including:

A 5.0-star rating on TripAdvisor
Cancellation rates staying below 10%

Supported by clearer communication and automated confirmations.

For the team, Rezdy has become a long-term growth partner rather than just a booking tool, providing structure, insight, and flexibility as the business continues to evolve.

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