Online booking to promote your outdoor and adventure activities

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This article presents the advantages and importance of online booking for your outdoor and adventure activities. It is written for professionals who are not yet equipped with booking software, but also for those who want to improve the way they use it.

8 points to discover the benefits of online booking

Number 1: Are you constantly running out of time? ⏲️

We're not talking here about the time you'll save on administration, planning, payments and so on: that varies depending on the booking software. However, we can guarantee that any online sales solution (used properly) will save you time when selling your outdoor and adventure activities. You'll find two concrete examples below!

1. By having an online sales solution, the number of calls and emails will decrease as customers will be able to book without needing to contact you. In 2023 at Manawa we only spoke to 35% of customers who bought on the website. As a reminder, the activities we sell the most of worldwide are canyoning, paragliding, rafting and diving, so the excuse "my activities are too complicated to book online" is no longer necessarily true today. I invite you to take a look at this previous article on how to build an activity to sell on the internet.

2. You'll save time when dealing with your customers, as you'll be able to answer their questions, reassure them, explain how your activities work and then invite them to book directly on the website. To further increase the conversion rate and eliminate no-shows, you can send them the link to book directly by text message or email.

Bonus: You can even optimise the effectiveness of your voicemail and automatic email returns by simply telling customers that they can book directly on your site. In over 50% of cases, when you call them back, they will already have made the reservation and paid on your site 😉

Number 2: Extra income before the season starts! 💰

Our outdoor and adventure activities are often seasonal and increasingly booked at the last minute: we have gone under 10 days on average over the year 2023 at Manawa.

Online sales are a tool that allows you to earn money by taking bookings and, above all, payments in advance, and therefore to smooth out your cash flow by having more regular inflows. It won't change your seasonality overnight, but it will allow you to take X% of payments in advance that you would certainly not have had otherwise.

Online sales can also enable you to sell gift vouchers, which can be a great way to get a head start on your cash flow around the festive season 😉

Number 3: Communicate and expand your seasons! 📅

One of the advantages of online sales is that it lets visitors to your site know that you are open and that they can come and find out about your activities.

A customer who arrives on your site and wants to come during a specific period, but can't necessarily find the information, is likely to move on without contacting you. Online sales will enable you to have a calendar showing your availability, so that customers can immediately project the dates they have in mind.

It's a superb tool for showing that you're open before and after the season. If a customer arrives on your site to book in July but sees that you're open in the spring, they might decide to come earlier!

A word of advice: as soon as your season is over, it's a good idea to open for the following year straight away, so that your customers can plan ahead for their next holidays or weekends. You can start by opening on just a few dates, for example during your high season at first, or on long weekends, and then adjust.

Number 4: Significantly reduce customer cancellations! ❌

By booking online, you can reduce cancellations and even eliminate No Shows for your outdoor and adventure activities.

By giving customers the chance to book and pay online on your website, you will significantly reduce last-minute cancellations and/or delays, as well as no-shows. By paying online, customers feel more engaged. At Manawa, for example, we have less than 1.5% customer cancellations (whether or not they respect the cancellation policies that our partners choose according to their needs). Customers who have booked and paid in advance are generally very keen to come and discover your activities!

However, make sure you clearly state your cancellation policies on your website so that your customers are not in for any nasty surprises.

Number 5: Make your activities more accessible to your customers

Today, it takes 4 clicks to make an appointment with a cardiologist, 3 to book a restaurant and 5 to buy a skateboard on the internet: at Manawa we can't really imagine the new generations picking up the phone to make a call or worse, writing an email to book your outdoor and adventure activities.

We invite you to ask your children, nephews and neighbours under the age of 20 to phone to book a restaurant or even just order a pizza. It's not always easy for a French person in France, so imagine asking them to do the same thing when you're on holiday in Germany or Portugal. Facilities that are not equipped by 2025 will lose a significant number of bookings year after year!

The activities sector, and particularly outdoor and adventure activities, has changed enormously in a very short space of time, with Covid speeding things up a great deal in terms of digitisation. In my opinion, our historic customer base of 'outdoor sports fans' will continue to grow gradually, but we're also convinced that more and more new customers will also want to come and discover your different activities. So it's up to us, the players and sellers, to adapt to their new expectations and habits, by creating the right activities, but also by adapting our tools to make it quick and easy for them to come and discover and share our passions. So they can discover and book their activities in just a few clicks.

Number 6: Add to your existing groups!

One of the main difficulties for many of our partners offering outdoor and adventure activities is filling groups. Outside the few weeks of high season, it's quite common to see incomplete groups, and this is one of the reasons why it's difficult to smooth out the seasons. Online booking can help you fill your groups better, so you can make the most of your outings.

A simple solution is to open your calendars on your websites with the option of booking specific dates online only. For example, you can define that a particular activity is only available on Saturdays at 9am, Sundays at 2pm and Fridays at 5pm. You can also visually highlight guaranteed departures, the number of places remaining or the most popular slots to encourage customers to choose this date rather than another.

At Manawa, we put orange dots on dates where there are already a lot of bookings for our partners using booking software.

availability calendar on manawa activities connected via api
manawa.com

Number 7: Increase your online presence, especially on Google 📈

Online booking will increase your natural referencing on the Internet and therefore your position in your customers' searches. How can you do this?

To take online bookings, you'll need to rework your websites and product pages. By default, this will enable you to be better referenced by search engines such as Google, as you will be answering more of the recurring questions asked by customers.

What's more, the aim of search engines is for customers to find what they're looking for directly and easily. If a customer writes "book + activity + destination", their various algorithms will naturally and logically bring up sites that offer this possibility with their respective booking software 😉

So if you add content about your activities and give yourself the option of booking directly online, you'll gain in visibility and bookings.

Number 8: Reach new distribution channels and save time with your resellers!

Online booking can enable you to reach a whole host of new distribution channels, many of which are still under construction. Having your schedules and availability online will enable many other players to discover, understand, take an interest in and, above all, promote your outdoor and adventure activities to their customers/audiences.

Here are a few examples: the tourism and accommodation industries, online sales websites (like Manawa 😉 ), works councils, travel agencies, brands, the media, travel bloggers and influencers, and surely many others that we've forgotten or haven't yet identified.

On Manawa.com in particular, having online booking software can help you save time and reach even more customers!

Today we are connected to several reservation software applications via API (Resamare, FareHarbor, Trekksoft, BookingKit, Activitar, Turitop, Bokun, Yoplanning, Regiondo and Rezdy) and we add new ones every year depending on the requests and uses of our partners.

For our partners using one of the connected software packages, we are able to display their availability live on Manawa.com and, when customers make a booking, we are able to automatically send all the information relating to the booking directly to our partners' schedules (surname, first name, customer's email address and additional information, etc.).

Above all, it reassures customers and makes their booking experience smoother!

The main added value is that it multiplies the number of bookings by more than 1.5 thanks to the "Immediate Confirmation" label that appears on the thumbnails presenting the activities.

vignette boat activity in corsica and paragliding in chamonix sur manawa
Manawa.com - Corsica Sud Croisières - Air Sports Chamonix

What's more, even if we haven't yet made the API connection, using online sales can save you an enormous amount of time with Manawa :

-> Today, most booking software can create reseller access for you so that external teams (such as the Manawa customer service team) can check your availability directly on your site to refer customers and then enter the customer's information directly into your schedules. Our article: How Manawa bookings work for partners

Software already connected via API to Manawa.com!

Below is a list of reservation software connected via API with Manawa.com, but there are many other tools available on the market:

Still not sure? Take a test with Manawa!

As a Manawa partner, you can also test online booking by redirecting your customers to your Manawa.com pages.

The idea is simply to put a specific web link (that we can track) directly on your site, which would redirect customers to your pages on Manawa.com and which would automatically reduce the commission for bookings made via this link (by removing customer acquisition costs).

You will find an example for our partners Espace Plongée Martinique:

-> I invite you to visit their website and click on the green "Book now" button at the foot of the page: https://www.espaceplongee-martinique.com/

espace plongée martinique and manawa.com diving school website, use of the booking widget
Espace Plongée Martinique
If you are already a partner and would like more information, please write directly to your regional manager. If you are not yet a partner and would like to find out more about Manawa, you can also request a contact: Become a partner.