Adventure South NZ

Adventure South looks to Odyssey to gain efficiencies and improved customer experience

About Adventure South

Beginning some 25 years ago Adventure South is one of New Zealand's founding Adventure Tourism companies. They offer over 40 guided trips each year which are active cycling and hiking based. Trips are guided with a support vehicle, and group sizes range from 4 to 14 people. Adventure South operate trips across all of New Zealand working with a variety of accommodation and activity providers. They operate with a team of 28 staff and an office and depot in Christchurch servicing and hiring a fleet of 200+ bikes, and operating vehicles and trailer resources.

Background

Christchurch-based Adventure South NZ (Adventure South) specialises in creating active holidays in some of New Zealand’s most outstanding locations. Small group, guided tours include cycle trails, road cycling, mountain biking and walking.

For managing its tours, Adventure South was finding the functionality in its existing on-premise CRM solution was restricted. It was aging, hard to use and wasn’t meeting the needs of a growing business. The CRM wasn’t integrated with other business systems or the website, which meant a lot of double, and sometimes triple, handling of booking data. This was time-consuming and left room for error. User licenses were restricted, access to reporting was limited and finally, too many processes were manual and needed to be automated to save time and offer a better customer experience.

Phil Wyndham, General Manager at Adventure South, contacted Odyssey, who he’d known for a number of years, and outlined the key criteria for the new solution; “Cloud-based, deliver efficiencies within a complex service offering and eliminate double and triple data entry. It had to integrate with the financials and manage complex inventory. We were confident that Odyssey could deliver based on their extensive experience in the tourism industry and having a deep understanding of our business and operational requirements".

"It was like witnessing a miracle, something that used to take me 1-2 weeks to complete was suddenly done in about 10 seconds!" Adventure South staff member

Pathway to a Solution

Workshops and discussions were held with teams from all departments at Adventure South, enabling Odyssey to get a full and detailed picture and ensure that existing system challenges could be resolved.

Whilst the process went smoothly enough, Covid lockdowns interrupted plans and caused business distractions which resulted in a slower than planned implementation. But a pattern of develop, test, implement was established to keep things progressing.

Training took place for the staff to ensure they were comfortable with all the new functionality and could see the benefits and time-savings.

The most important outcome was to automate the emails – many emails go to clients about their journeys and automating that was critical to success and to customer satisfaction. Assigning inventory was also important – this helps manage all the complexities around equipment, bikes, vehicles etc. When clients turn-up for their tours, the right equipment is in the right place.

''They know tourism – they really know the industry, that’s paramount and was a major contribution to the success of the project"

Crossing the finish line

The new system went live in May 2020 and has been well received. Users are happy working is faster and easier. Says Phil “We have one integrated CMS, one source of the truth. The system has resulted in processing efficiencies, we have great reporting functionality and it’s so much easier than before as everything is under one system. The email automation is saving us a lot of time and providing a smooth and efficient service to our clients”.

“Working with Odyssey has been great – it’s a good, close partnership based on trust. We all had the same end-goal in mind which was a key driver to success” says Phil, “They know tourism – they really know the industry, that’s paramount and was a major contribution to the success of the project. We didn’t have to spend loads of time explaining how we operate; they understood the nuances of our operation and that’s been a big benefit”.

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We value the close relationship we have with the team at Adventure South, and for the shared learning as we've gone on this journey. We're also grateful for the support in taking Odyssey out to help others in the industry...
Odyssey Leadership team