Search Icon

SUCCESS STORY

Juneau Whale Watch

juneau-whale-watch

Overview

 

In its 17th year of operation, Alaskan-owned company Juneau Tours and Whale Watch weighs in as the largest independent tour provider in Southeast Alaska. But don’t let that title mislead you, this family operation is all about the customer experience. From sales agents and dock representatives to bus drivers/ guides, naturalists/deck hands and boat captains, Juneau Tours and Whale Watch treats everyone like well-loved family.

Back in 1998, Sky Bonnell relocated from Hawaii to fish commercially and drive a cab in the off-season. Even back then—before everyone owned a cell phone—Juneau greeted a large number of visitors. The growing demand soon warranted the need for a larger vehicle so Sky bought a bus in 2002.

Flash forward to 2019, Sky’s little company that started with a cab is now in two locations (Juneau and Skagway), offers more than eight different tours and serves close to 90,000 guests every summer. Managed by his sister, Serene Hutchinson, Juneau Tours and Whale Watch employs 60+ employees (more than half call Alaska their home) and has a whopping 70% employee retention rate!

Results

 

After deciding to move forward with Rezgo, they visited our office for an in-person onboarding experience.  Within two days, they were able to answer our accounting, operations, sales, and marketing department questions.  Rezgo helped us resolve our previous pain points related to our daily operational flow and revenue channels.

The Rezgo app is also a great addition for dock sales during peak season.  Bookings can be completed with just a few clicks. We’re looking forward to working with Rezgo on future projects!

MORE SUCCESS STORIES

Don't Just Take Our Word For It

  • Adventure Company

    Zipit Forest Adventures

    Zipit Forest Adventures opened its (and Ireland’s) first forest high ropes course at Lough Key Forest and Activity Park, Co. Roscommon in 2011. In 2013, we opened our second course in Tibradden Wood, Dublin 16 in the wonderful Dublin Mountains. Our third course in Farran Forest Park, Co. Cork opened for business in 2015. Zipit is a treetop high ropes forest adventure park with a difference. A place for young and old, where children can let their imagination run wild and where adults can embrace their inner child. You can climb high into the treetops, swing into cargo nets, even ride a BMX across a bridge, before zipping down one of our many ziplines. Results Before Rezgo, our booking system was very basic and not as user friendly as Rezgo. Customers had many problems attempting to book in, but with Rezgo this process has been streamlined. After viewing the Rezgo demo we were very impressed with the easy flow, layout and functions. Since signing up to Rezgo we have found the system extremely user friendly for us and for our customers. Our phone calls have reduced greatly due to the ease of making a booking via mobile, our most popular form of booking. And the automatic email reminders that you can schedule to go out to customers are also great. It’s a great advantage having a local contact in Rezgo support, as we get speedy responses if we have an issue. Through the back office, our staff have much more control over adapting schedules and changing bookings with little effort. Cancellation and reschedules can be completed at the click of a button. The amount of time we spend monitoring bookings has been reduced and Rezgo continues to work with us to improve and personalize our booking system. During the Covid pandemic, we’re reducing the necessity of paper handling by making use of online waivers. We’ve worked closely with Rezgo to ensure a smooth transition to paperless.

    Read More
  • Attractions

    Phare, The Cambodian Circus

    Phare Circus is the most unique, authentic and socially responsible business in Siem Reap. The circus is the social business extension of Phare Ponleu Selpaknon-profit school. The school was founded by 9 young men and an art teacher from France who came together in the refugee camp during the Khmer Rouge war. Arts, education and social support are the primary missions, but some students showed tremendous talent and determination. The circus was started to provide those students well-paying job opportunities that didn’t previously exist in Cambodia, while at the same time providing financial support to the non-profit school. Phare Circus is the textbook definition of a social enterprise. The business is 75% owned by the non-profit school. All revenue generated from the business supports the school or other social causes. Jobs created have helped break the cycle of poverty of at-risk Cambodian youth. Phare Circus is not a conventional acrobatic circus. It’s uniquely Cambodian story telling using live music, dance, drama, circus and sometimes visual arts. The artists create the stories themselves based on their life experiences. This brings a character and authenticity not often found in live performances. They share a part of their lives with guests. Before Rezgo, Phare Circus did not have its own online booking platform. A link to a third-party site was provided on the ticketing page, which was the only online sales presence we had at the time. It worked, but didn’t help with credibility to send sales to another site. It limited the amount of customer information we could get and how we interacted with them. It’s also an expensive way to sell compared to a proper direct-sales mechanism. Then our CEO met Rezgo at an event in Singapore. It happened to be at the same time that a bank in Cambodia first introduced online merchant accounts. We introduced Rezgo to the bank and they worked out all the programming needed to connect. This kind of service has been one of the main reasons Rezgo has retained our business. There have been several competitors approaching us since then, but we feel Rezgo has been a true partner and that means something. Rezgo has been very responsive to our requests, even if they are a bit unique. Results With Rezgo, our website bookings have become our #1 single source of ticket sales. In 2019, ticket sales on the Phare Circus website were four times higher than the highest-selling DMC. Having more control over sales allows us to make decisions that best benefit the organization vs being at the mercy of business partners. Customer information collected during the booking process has allowed us to build relationships with guests. The most important element of Rezgo for us is that customers can book, pay and receive instant confirmation from our own website. Online direct bookers don’t want to wait, and the process must be fast and easy. Providing POS access to higher volume local agents took a lot of pressure off our own customer service staff too, automating the transaction rather than having them call in. Rezgo’s personal service and flexibility has helped make Phare Circus a leader in Cambodia for booking and paying online.

    Read More
  • Virtual Tours

    Bible Tours

    At Bible Tours, we’ve offered tours of the British Museum and other sites in London for many years, with the unique view of looking at things from a biblical and historical perspective. Before Rezgo, we would create all bookings manually which was very labor intensive for us and our guests. Now guests can easily view all tours, languages, dates and times available. This has made the whole tour experience more enjoyable with an easy booking procedure. We have been with Rezgo for about 5 years and have no plans to change. Results We chose Rezgo for its reasonable fees and great customer support. The interface is user friendly for guests and also our admin team. We’ve been particularly satisfied with the inventory management, which we have used to create tours in several languages. We are also very happy with the ease of adjusting bookings. If a customer needs to change their booking, this usually just takes one email request and our team can change the rest on Rezgo. Rezgo was always happy to help us and work through any problems we had, such as very high traffic to our site. If we ever had urgent situations, Rezgo was normally able to help within minutes which was very impressive. In 2020 we quickly changed to offer our tours virtually using Zoom video conferencing. Without Rezgo, it would have been very hard for us to adapt and create the virtual tour concept. We are pleased to say that many have enjoyed this opportunity with us, and we’ve been able to offer more languages and new tour themes too.

    Read More