Boundless Adventures is an aerial adventure park with 3 locations. Our location in Purchase, NY had nearly 30,000 visitors during the 2019 season. For 2020 we will be rolling out High Trek POS in all of our locations. About half of our visitors come as part of a group and the other half were general admission visitors. Groups include school and camp field trips, corporate outings, birthday parties, and scout outings. These visitors are all booked in advance. The other half, general admission, book both online and walk-in to the store to purchase tickets.
"Prior to using High Trek POS, we utilized 2 separate systems. Groups provided us with a list of their participants. We then checked the names in the waiver system and let the group organizer know who still needed to complete the waiver. This was a frustrating experience for all involved, and cost us a lot in terms of labor expense. Often the group organizer misspelled the names of their participants or the person that completed the waiver misspelled their name. One misspelled name resulted in lots of communication between our office staff, the group organizer, and the participant.
With the implementation of High Trek, these 2 systems were married into one. This provided many benefits including real time access by the group organizer of waiver completion status as well as the elimination of the need for our office staff to manually check waivers.
The added benefit was the ability to print out tickets at time of check-in with the participants’ ages taken from the waiver.
Customers that had visited us in prior years have commented on the ease of use and appreciated the immediate transparency. Our staff have been very happy as the tediousness of checking the waivers has been automated."
"Prior to using High Trek POS, we used a separate POS system to sell merchandise. Additionally, if someone paid with cash, they needed to be rung up in both our reservation system as well as the POS system to ensure that the cash drawer was accurate. If someone wanted to pay with a credit card and purchase both an admission tickets as well as merchandise, it required multiple transactions. This resulted in higher transaction fees as well as longer checkout times.
By combining them into one system, it simplified the processes for the cashiers. Now they only had to use one system! Also, it allowed us the ability to sell retail merchandise as add-ons for general admission tickets purchased online which has allowed for an uptick in average spend/customer."
"With High Trek POS, the only way a guest gets an admission ticket is if the system has a signed waiver and the ticket has been paid for. This eliminates the risks that come along with a cashier mistakenly not checking a waiver and a participant climbs without having signed the liability waiver. Also, with the printed tickets requiring payment, this greatly reduces the risk of employee theft.
We have also had customers in the past reach out to us after their visit requesting a refund because they didn’t have all of their participants. With the waiver and check-in data all housed in the one system, we have much improved visibility that allows us to present a clearer more accurate picture to customers after the fact.
Another issue that we have had with customers in the past relate to late arrivals. Since we are a reservation-based business, if someone arrives late, their visit might be cut short. In the past, customers have complained that the late start was due to an operational issue on our end. However now with High Trek POS, we can see the exact times that waivers were signed. This is the typical reason for delays, and something that is the customer’s responsibility to complete prior to arrival."
"A lot of attention has been paid to ensure the group organizer has many tools in their tool belt. First, they can sort the waivers by age, email address, first name or last name. Second, if someone has been to our park before, the organizer can enter the participant’s email address that is linked to their respective waiver, and assign that waiver to this group’s event.
Also, because the organizer is cognizant of how many slots they have committed to, the groups tend to be more accurate in terms of how many participants they actually have. In the past, they would commit to 10 people and show up with 20. This process allows them to manage our expectations better without us having to proactively reach out to them."
"With the introduction of the transaction page, all required information is at our fingertips. Cashiers can scroll through the day’s bookings and assess easily who owes us money, who will need to complete waivers, what time of day is going to be hectic, and when there will be natural break periods.
On this page, you can easily view transactions or reservations that took place on a particular day or over a certain time period. While those two are often the same for walk-ins, pre-booked reservations have a transaction on one day and a reservation on another day.
The customer side of the page is very intuitive. The top of the page has all of the customer information. Below that is the waiver information, an below that it is a quick check of a button to check everyone in and print their tickets."
"Our first reservation system required us to add every time slot manually. With High Trek POS we are able to set the day’s hours and in what increment the bookings are allowed (We use 15-minute increments). We can have the standard schedule and easily make changes to specific days if we want to block off certain hours.
The system is very versatile in that you can have different capacity availabilities for different types of customers, and they all employ a logic that allows for ease of implementation.
The system integrates with QuickBooks which has saved us bookkeeping expenses."
"Since the waiver system is integrated in the reservation system, we are able to send out an email to all visitors the day following their visit. Previously we were only able to send emails to the person that booked the visit. We can now market to customers during their birthday month, and have more opportunities for creative outreach to all customers."
"High Trek POS has been available 24/7 to help. In addition to working through minor bumps that come along with any implementation, they have listened to all of our feedback and have made many system enhancements based on that feedback. In the past, with larger companies I was told that they would put a request in to fix a bug or make an enhancement. However, given all of the competing priorities, I never felt that our needs were addressed. With High Trek POS, I feel like we are all on the same team, with the end goal to be the best all in one system satisfying the needs for aerial parks, water parks, and laser tag facilities."
Responses and Quotes provided in an interview with Lorrie Funtleyder, Owner & Operator of Boundless Adventures
