An hour outside Cape Town, guests at Cape Canopy Tour clip into a harness and ride eleven steel cables through the Elgin Valley, some over 300 metres long, more than 100 metres above the ground, connecting 13 platforms built into the cliffs of the Cape Nature Reserve. Lonely Planet named it the second-best new attraction in the world shortly after it opened in 2014, and it now draws around 20,000 visitors a year. Before any of that happens, every guest signs an indemnity waiver and confirms they understand exactly what the day involves.
What Cape Canopy Tour Was Missing
Every guest signed a paper indemnity form at the start of the tour and a feedback form at the end. Under South African law, all of it had to be kept for at least three years.
“We used to use a lot of paper. All our guests signed an indemnity form at the start and a feedback form at the end. That’s thousands of pieces of paper every year that South African law insisted we had to keep for at least three years,” said Managing Director Ryan Larkman.
“It was a container load. It was horrible!”
— Ryan Larkman, Cape Canopy Tour
Paper created legal exposure, too. Guests would sometimes scratch out clauses or ask for exclusions on the form, undermining the standard terms Ryan’s attorneys required. Finding a past guest’s details meant digging through the archive by hand, and Ryan was scanning indemnity forms into Dropbox himself just to keep a digital backup. “So that was a bit of a nightmare administration-wise.”
What Happened When They Switched to Wherewolf
Every guest now signs a digital waiver with a fixed set of clauses, no scratching out, no exclusions, no legal grey area. Ryan can search a guest’s last name and pull their full history in seconds through the Wherewolf Dashboard instead of digging through paper archives.
The whole team runs on it. All 35 permanent and 20 seasonal staff use Wherewolf daily, guides greet guests in the parking lot with an iPad in hand, check-in and waiver signing happen digitally, and receptionists, lunch-order staff, and managers all work off the same system.
A Clearer Picture, Sharper Marketing
Marketing questions are now part of the compulsory indemnity form guests fill out at check-in, not a voluntary feedback form nobody bothers with at the end. Asking “where did you hear about us?” up front means Ryan actually gets an answer.
“Being able to streamline all our processes is a big aspect of growth. We’ve launched successfully and now we’re working on improving our systems, and that’s why we use Wherewolf,” Ryan said.
That data now flows into Mailchimp and Cape Canopy’s own photography platform, Floodin, instead of sitting in a filing cabinet.
Setting Expectations on Safety and Physical Requirements
The tour ends with a one-kilometre walk over steep terrain, and guests who weren’t warned about it used to leave negative feedback. Ryan added a compulsory question to the indemnity form to fix it.
“Our tour includes a one kilometre walk at the end, and we use Wherewolf to ask ‘are you fit enough to walk up one kilometre steep terrain?’ In the past we had occasional negative feedback with some people saying, ‘nobody told me that we had to walk out.’ That wasn’t correct, but now we have this question on the indemnity form and they have to check it. So they know what to expect and when they go on the tour there’s less comeback.”
Cape Canopy Tour Went Paperless. Then So Did the Rest of the Group.
Ryan liked Wherewolf enough to recommend it across the whole Canopy Tours South Africa group, Tsitsikamma, Magaliesberg, Karkloof, Drakensberg, Magoebaskloof, and Swaziland’s Malolotja Reserve. Most of them have adopted it since.
“Their first impression is that of a slick organisation, and that has definitely improved our feedback and rankings. They love that we’re so well organised.”
— Ryan Larkman, Cape Canopy Tour