How Skinetworks is using Tourpaq to drive up revenue

Is your business counting on you to drive even more revenue this year? Are you eager to try a new strategy for increasing revenue? In today’s blog, we will examine how Skinetworks are using Tourpaq, and how they bounced back from covid pandemic on the Tourpaq platform.

Let's meet Filip of Skinetworks

He has been in the travel Industry 7 years and has always been working with sales and customer service.  

One of the first things Filip pointed out was how the product at Skinetworks was more complex than at other travel agencies using Tourpaq. Skinetworks has various kinds of transport, hotels, and a lot of additional products like ski rental and ski passes. This just makes the product more complex.

Skinetworks inspire people to go skiing, and includes the brands Danski, Nortlander & Slopetrotter. They operate in two different markets, offering 4 types of transports and more than 300 accommodations for sale

Because of the complex products the booking system was originally self-developed to execute their online strategies. During that time, Filip functioned as an in-house sales rep to drive customer request and sales.

Filip has now transitioned into a new leadership role within the company as the sales manager.

When the pandemic hit, finding the right path forward was difficult for many tour operators. Especially when the business had to let go of key employees and at the risk of losing important knowledge about the agency, customers and processes that were in the minds of employees.

The pandemic has taught us how important the right IT setup is. Both to get through the pandemic but also to quickly get back into daily operation without having to hire too many new employees.

One of the first things Skinetworks did when the pandemic hits and all Europe was in lockdown was to downsize the team. But Europe was also the first place to open again, and this lined up with the season for Skinetworks.  

Luckily Skinetworks made the switch to Tourpaq well before the Pandemic hit, and this set the scene for Tourpaq to deliver on the promise:  

Tourpaq will radically simplify the way the organization works with operations by automating most of the complex processes of managing, selling, and booking travel.  

Now Skinetworks has had its first full season post the pandemic – but still with ever changing travel restrictions.  

Getting the wheels turning again was even more challenging when Skinetworks did not have the team they are used to, and the pandemic situation made planning for the season very uncertain and customer needs were unpredictable. As a result, the entire organization was forced to work in a new way and create new sales and revenue strategies.  

Filip has in-depth product, market, and customer knowledge, which is critical in decision making and staying on track to hit the sales and revenue goals. But without the sales team – online sales and operations efficiency was more important than ever. Here Tourpaq was put to the test. And succeeded.

Filip worked with 2 other booking systems before switching to Tourpaq. All the systems were self-developed – specifically for the needs they had at Skinetworks.  

Employees are the most expensive resource in the company. Therefore, Nortlander makes a great effort to ensure that employees can spend as much of their time as possible talking to customers and giving them a personal service – and as little time as possible on manual processes.

Tourpaq help us to automate and simplify our processes to reduce the workload and risk of manual errors.  

Time saving strategy

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One of the secrets is online sales rates...  

The customer can easily search for the desired destination and hotel and click through all the choices to find the total price for the entire vacation.

If the customer wants to book the vacation, it is done online, and the booking goes directly into the system.

This has been a huge time saver, as previously only about 35% booked without any contact with a seller. Now up to 70% of all customers book their vacation online without having to talk to the sales team first.

We moved many customers to online bookings when we introduced an online booking discount. This reduced the support needed on the phone and resulted in great time savings.

Revenue boosting strategy

Previously managing pricing was a lot of work, as the price matrix of the products was exceptionally large. With Tourpaq, Filip and the revenue manager can process all product and sales data to make data-based business decisions.  

If the products are sold too quickly, then the price needs to increase.  

Likewise, if sales lag in an area, then the price needs to be lower.  

Filip likes to dig deep in the data, so Skinetworks has integration with Microsoft PowerBI, which is one of the best tools for data analysis and reporting. Now Filip can build the exact reports and the overview that he needs to monitor daily, based on the data from Tourpaq.

Tourpaq do offer automated rules to move the price up and down depending on how much you want to automate the complex task of hitting the market with the right price, at the right time. Fillip suggests this would be an excellent feature for travel agencies with less complex products and market dynamics.

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Sales boosting strategy

Filip needs to make sure they have the right products for sales. These are both transport and accommodation. It changes all the time depending on what is being sold and how prices are evolving.

Tourpaq enables Skinetworks to make products combining GDS flights with bed-banks, channel managers or fixed contracted products with dynamic products.  

In this way, Filip can make extra products where it is needed, or buy extra accommodation if there is the opportunity to sell more - driving incremental revenue through his advanced insights.

Summary

Tourpaq is not only a booking engine for selling tours online, though it certainly does that - Tourpaq is the cornerstone in operation. For Skinetworks Tourpaq is a vital system that handles all the complexity of the business as they operate with 3 brands in two different markets, offering 4 types of transport and more than 300 accommodations for sale. Tourpaq automate and simplify Skinetworks operations to reduce the workload and risk of manual errors.  

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