Optimising the partnership with Manawa

10 tips for getting more bookings with Manawa

Before reading the advice below, we invite you to log in to your Manawa partner area and take the time to reread your pages, asking yourself whether they suit you or whether you need to make any changes/improvements.

1- Arrange a meeting with your account manager

The first piece of advice is toarrange a meeting with your account manager by contacting them directly by email: we're contactable, passionate and have a global vision of the sale of outdoor and adventure activities, so make the most of it!

When you talk to your account manager, he or she will ask you lots of questions to gain a better understanding of how you work, your challenges and your activities. This will give them more information to share with all the Manawa teams in order to promote you, as well as providing you with advice and feedback from other professionals in the sector around the world.

At this meeting, you can also look together at your figures and the figures for Manawa's destinations or sports. You'll be able to analyse origins, average ages, booking times and acquisition channels to come up with ideas for reaching more customers.

2- Tell us more about your activities

At Manawa, we've found that the more information we have about your activities, the easier it is for us to create pages that reflect you and promote them effectively. We therefore recommend that you write us a very detailed description of each of your activities so that our content teams can rework your pages and our marketing teams can improve our acquisition channels.

The easiest way is to tell us about the typical experience of a customer who discovers your activity by telling us what they do, what they see and what they feel throughout the activity. I invite you to read the article Building an outdoor and adventure activity to sell on the internet for more information.

PS: If it takes too long to write, a simple solution is to record yourself vocally and send us the recording.

3- Enhance your photos and add video 📹

Images are increasingly important for selling your business on the internet, so it's really important to take the time to improve them to get more customers via Manawa.

We carried out AB testing (proposing several variants of the same activity that differ according to a single criterion in order to determine which version gives the best results with customers) on the Manawa search engine and placed equivalent activities side by side. This showed us that visuals have a very big impact on page conversions.

For two 100% identical pages, one with superb photos and the other with average photos, over 90% of people went to the activity with the better photos.

We did the same test with the same two activities and added a 5-star review on the activity with the average photos. The activity with the pretty photos still took 68% of the traffic.

I'll leave you to imagine if we'd done the test with the best photos and reviews and invite you to read our article Tips for getting the best photos and videos to sell your outdoor and adventure activities.

4- Reduce the cancellation policy

Details are important and cancellation policies are one of them: on Manawa, they are very visible on your activity pages between the meeting point and the customer reviews.

The last few years have been special and many people have had problems with cancellations and refunds across all business sectors. So be sure to check your cancellation policies on Manawa and see if you can reduce them. Today, 60% of our business is flexible, 15% super flexible, 15% intermediate and 10% strict or super strict.

5- Open your bookings as soon as possible! 📅

It's true that more and more of Manawa's customers are booking at the last minute (less than 10 days on average at Manawa), and this trend will continue to decline over the next few years. What's more, many customers, especially those travelling abroad, prefer to book in advance, because it's a trip and not just a holiday. So it's important, and even more so if you're using booking software, to give them the chance to book your activities as they look, even if they're planning their holiday a year in advance.

For some multi-activity destinations, we have even noticed that some customers book early in order to spread out the costs of their stay, and have a bigger budget when they are there to enjoy it.

This can cause a few management difficulties, but it can help your customers organise their trips. If schedules are closed, they'll move on thinking you're not available and won't necessarily come back later.

6- Optimise the management of your bookings

You have several ways of managing your bookings with Manawa, and a good way of improving the partnership to get more customers, but also to save time, is to choose the solution that is easiest for you and your teams. Today, we can manage your bookings in several ways:

• Automatically: connection via API with your booking software (Fareharbor, YoPlanning, Resamare, Rezdy, Bokun, BookingKit, Trekksoft, Activitar, Regiondo and Turitop).
• Semi-automatically: give Manawa customer service access to your booking tool.
• Manually: automatic booking request by e-mail and SMS that you must accept or postpone.

You'll find all the information you need in our article on how Manawa partner bookings work.

7- Reduce last-minute booking delays

Allowing your customers to book your activities at the last minute can have several advantages. To give you some figures, in 2023, 13% of Manawa's customers booked less than 24 hours in advance and 6% less than 4 hours before the start of the activity.

• Flexibility for customers: Some customers prefer to book their activities at the last minute, depending on their schedule, the weather and the organisation of their holiday. By offering this option, you can attract customers who are spontaneously looking for outdoor activities.
• Optimised use of stock: By allowing last-minute bookings, you can make better use of your resources and maximise your capacity. This can be particularly beneficial for topping up existing groups, but also during off-peak periods when you may have unused availability.
• Responding to unforeseen demand: Sometimes unforeseen events or opportunities (weather, advertising, etc.) can generate sudden interest in your activities. By allowing last-minute bookings, you can respond quickly to this demand and capture unexpected booking opportunities.
• Improved customer experience: Offering the option of booking at the last minute shows that you are attentive to your customers' needs and preferences. This can help boost customer satisfaction and build customer loyalty.
• Competitive differentiation: In outdoor activities, where it can sometimes be difficult to find last-minute availability, offering this option can set you apart from your competitors and attract customers who are looking for this flexibility.

8- Introduce one-off promotions

As a Manawa partner, you can run one-off promotions on your various activities - this is called yield management. Also known as dynamic price management, it's a strategy widely used in many sectors, including the tourism and leisure industry. It's still new in outdoor and adventure activities and at Manawa. Here are a few reasons why yield management can be beneficial for selling your activities on Manawa:

• Fill your existing groups: By adjusting prices, you can better manage the capacity of your business. For example, you can offer discounts during periods of low demand to attract more customers and optimise the use of your stocks.
• Optimise your seasonality: Many outdoor and adventure activities are seasonal. Yield management allows you to adapt your prices according to the season, taking advantage of peak periods and mitigating off-peak periods.
• Responding to market fluctuations: Consumer behaviour and market trends can vary according to events. Volcanic eruptions in Iceland or snow conditions in the Alps, to give just two examples, have a direct impact on how much customers are prepared to pay to discover your activities. Yield management allows you to adjust your prices in line with changes in the competitive environment and customer preferences/expectations.

9- Go back to work and create new activities

One of the most effective ways of increasing your bookings with Manawa is to take the time to rework your existing activities and/or create new ones. Before you start doing this, please take the time to go through the first 3 points in this article, which are quicker and easier to implement.

When we talk about reworking or creating new activities, we mean that you, with the help of your account manager, ask yourself questions to find out how you can improve your activities so that they work as well as possible on Manawa (on the Internet in general). This will undoubtedly lead to changes in the structure of your activities and may involve costs such as adding options, changing a meeting point, hiring a photographer or a web editor in order to better meet your customers' expectations.

We invite you to read the article on building an outdoor and adventure activity to sell on the internet and to make an appointment with your account manager before you start!

10- Try to get more customer reviews on Manawa pages

Gathering customer reviews is crucial to selling more of your outdoor activities on Manawa.

• Gain credibility and trust: Customer reviews offer a form of social validation for your activities. Potential customers are more inclined to trust businesses that have received positive reviews from other customers.
• Influence on purchasing decisions: Customer reviews can greatly influence consumers' purchasing decisions. We carried out an AB test with two identical activities on the Manawa search site, one with 2 5-star reviews and the other with no reviews, and 82% of customers booked the activity with reviews.
• Feedback for improvement: Customer reviews can provide valuable information about what your customers value and where you could improve. By listening carefully to customer feedback, it also allows Manawa to optimise our advertising campaigns based on the feedback.

We invite you to read the article dedicated to the subject of customer reviews for selling your outdoor and adventure activities.

Bonus - Invite your friends and neighbours to join you

We have several acquisition channels for selling your activities via Manawa, and one of them is multi-booking. This channel consists of allowing customers to discover and book your activities by arriving on the website via other activities. Our aim is to have as wide a range of different activities as possible so that we can show the destination to as many customers as possible and ensure that everyone involved benefits.

In Quebec, it's very common for a customer to arrive at Manawa wanting to book a whale-watching cruise to Tadoussac, and then, as they move around the site, discover that they can also add a sea kayaking trip on the Saguenay Fjord and a bear-watching activity.

This last point (but all the previous ones too) will allow us to continue, with your help, to develop outdoor and adventure activities throughout the world and to allow Manawa to become the leading website for the sale of outdoor and adventure activities!

If you are already a partner, 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.