Off Road Adventures

Off Road Adventures Runs 3 Businesses Under 1 Roof with Wherewolf

At Off Road Adventures Queenstown, Gary Hough is a busy man. As the Business Development and Marketing Manager, he oversees the day-to-day strategy for growing the Off Road Adventures brand – an umbrella for three separate operating units that service the adventure tourism haven in New Zealand’s South Island.

“There are different elements to the business. We’ve got quad bikes, dirt bikes, buggy tours, 4WD scenic tours [and] motorcycle rentals,” Gary said. “They appeal to different markets.” For Gary, this requires a close attention to customer marketing data and understanding which advertising and marketing are having the best return for each of the offroading experiences the company offers.

It also causes challenges for his staff, working out of their Queenstown booking center. The tour guides are in and out frequently, preparing equipment for tours and planning guest pick-ups. With three separate booking systems operating for the different business units, it is impossible to expect staff to log in and out of each account depending on which activity they are assigned.

For the business to happen smoothly, Off Road Adventures needed an easy-to-use interface to provide the team a dashboard to access today’s bookings and activities and communicate with each other in a unified, central place. That’s where Wherewolf has come in and made a big impact on the efficiency of Off Road’s operations, which were previously all paper-based.

“Wherewolf simplifies the business for us”, says Gary. Staff can check the Wherewolf Dashboard and see which guests are coming in and check an internal notes tool that lets managers assign tasks and duties to the crew.

Gary believes that having a ‘one-stop-shop’ for business processes helps with “quick, easy decision-making”, as it makes clear who is responsible for what at any given time, on any given day

Paperless Guest and Feedback

“We use Wherewolf for our waivers, for the check-in process, [and] we also use it for our feedback system,” said Gary. When guests arrive at the booking center, they are handed an iPad where they complete their digital check-in, safety briefing, and sign a digital waiver inside the professional branded Wherewolf app. When timelines are running tight or guests running late, the participants hop in the fan to the activity site and fill out the Wherewolf app on the road.

The data is then automatically added to Off Road Adventures customer database where Gary can immediately access it for analysis. If the iPad was used in the van where a Wifi or Wireless Data signal isn’t available, the app syncs to the Dashboard when the iPad returns.

The company saves hundreds of dollars annually in paper storage and thousands of dollars in staff time trying to collate the information into a usable format. “It’s all on the iPad; at the end of the day we don’t have all that paperwork to store and file,” said Gary.

Taking Terms and Conditions Seriously

Wherewolf also provides Off Road Adventures with peace of mind when it comes to their health and safety responsibilities.

When the customer uses the Wherewolf app, they must accept each line item of the Terms and Conditions waiver before submitting it.

“When it was paper-based, people just glanced over the check-in sheet”, Gary says.

He doesn’t believe that this cursory glance was enough to ensure that customers really understood what they were signing up for.

According to Gary, Wherewolf has given Off Road “more confidence that [customers] are aware of what they are signing up to.”

Shifting Advertising Dollars To Achieve A Better ROI

Being a sales and marketing executive, Gary has a key responsibility to make sure Off Road Adventures’ market budget gets the best ROI. In a tourism-based town like Queenstown, there are a myriad of ways for potential customers to find out about activities, which can make allocating a marketing spend difficult. Gary has found Wherewolf’s feedback capability an essential tool in overcoming this.

“It’s super important to understand what marketing channels are working best for us”, says Gary.

The Wherewolf check-in process asks customers key questions that make it easy for operators to break down where customers heard about them, including valuable marketing data such as age, gender, and geographical location. From within the Wherewolf Dashboard, Gary is able to easily see whether their marketing dollars are best spent in the immediate term, as well as track trends over time across all three businesses.

The data has enabled Off Road Adventures to shift from poor performing advertising media to platforms that work – including optimizing their online spend. “Wherewolf has paid for itself ten-fold in terms of how and where we spend our advertising dollar,” said Gary.

“Wherewolf is a natural fit for tourism companies…for the costs involved, the return you get, customer satisfaction levels, and making the check-in process more professional and user-friendly”, he says. “It’s a no-brainer, really.”

You can learn more about Off Road Adventures and book an activity by visiting http://offroad.co.nz.