December 3, 2024 • 26 mins
We’re bringing you authentic stories from Spark 2024 in New Orleans in this episode! Join clients from diverse industries like Best Cabo Yachts, Cajun Food Tours, Navajo Tours Direct (and more!) as they share how FareHarbor has helped streamline their operations and boost bookings. From enhancing the customer experience to utilizing powerful features like FareHarbor Dock and our affiliate tools, these tour operators reveal how they’re using our platform to grow their businesses. Listen now for key insights on how FareHarbor empowers operators to succeed in an ever-competitive industry!
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FH Community & Podcast (00:00)
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Welcome to Growth powered by Fair Harbor where we explore the strategies behind thriving tour and activity businesses. Whether you're just starting out or scaling up, this podcast is packed with insights to help you succeed. Now here's your host, Fair Harbor's Community Manager, Rebecca Cosley.
You're at Spark NOLA 2024, having a great time here in New Orleans. For those who don't know you, can you introduce yourself, your business name and how long you've been with Fair Harbor? My name is Donna. The business name is DestinationCoupons.com. It's a value site. So people go on because they're looking for deals in specific areas. My husband and I started it about 25 years ago.
We pretty much started with Fair Harbor like 24 years ago. My name is Tiffany. I own a company called Best Cabo Yachts down in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. We have three boats, a 45-foot Sea Ray, a 63-foot Sibana, and an 85-foot Viking Princess. What makes us unique is we don't, other than like trusted affiliates, which we're actually really excited about setting up here and learning more about, we don't really use third parties down there. It's primarily word of mouth. And you know, you're dealing with the people that own the boat.
This is my second full year of using Fair Harbor. My first year exclusively using it as my go-to master calendar reservation system. I'm Chad Huntington. I'm the owner of Water Taxi in Oklahoma City. Water Taxi on the Bricktown Canal and Pete Rustin is our COO. So it's about a 40 minute narrated tour that runs on a man-made canal in downtown Oklahoma City, right through the historic district of Lakeview.
tours and talk about the history of Oklahoma City and Oklahoma. We've been on a trip for Harbor since 2018. My name is Alvin Begay with Navajo Tours Direct, Northern Arizona, Page Lake Valley area is where we're from. a land-based tour. What we do is we in the city of Page, we shuttle people from Page to both upper and lower end of the Canes and the horseshoe bend. And what makes your tour so special? What do your customers get out of your tours? It's native owned, Navajo owned and
We offer our, what they call, prime hours within the canyon, which is one of the best lighting in the canyon. My name is Marie DeCote. I have Cajun food tours in Cajun country, South Louisiana, Lafayette. I have a little 14 passenger bus. We pick people up and we, I consider myself an ambassador for Acadiana. Acadiana is Cajun country. I'm very, very passionate about our culture, about our history, about what makes us unique.
And of course, I'm very passionate about the food as well. I have been with Fair Harbor since 2019. My name is Summer Shine. I own Sunshine Cattle Adventures out of Waco, Texas. I'm an avid kayaker and I'm always getting people out on the water. And I saw something on TikTok that was these clear kayaks that had lights on them. So I was like, I could do that in Waco. We don't have anything like that. There's no real experiences on the river in Waco. So I thought it would be a cool thing to bring to our community. And sure enough,
Trinidad, thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks for being in New Orleans here at Spark 2024. Can you tell us a little bit about your business that's on Fair Harbor? Yeah, absolutely. So we have a hiking guiding company up in Denali, Alaska. Big people on day hikes teach them a whole bunch about Denali and Alaska as a whole and try to make their entire vacation better. It's just one tour. We've been on Fair Harbor for two years. Awesome. I'll see how long we've been in operation. Amazing.
a spoon based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and we've been around now for 13 years. So we do a bunch of different experiences that I guess the ultimate goal is to have people connect with our destinations, whether it be our cooking class, our gamut of food tours, we do events for corporate groups, and then we work within the event side of different channels, you know, corporate, leisure, to push-eats, you know.
Amazing, and how long have you been on Fair Harbor? It'll be, ooh, I think it'll be eight years this year. My name is Sylvia Drinkwater. Our business is The Last Wilderness Swamp Tours. We offer eco tours in the Chapulia Basin. You know, we just respect the wildlife and the nature around us. So in the Chapulia Basin, you know, there's a lot of alligators and lot of critters. So we really don't handle those animals or respect the distance between.
us, you know, and in their space. We don't feed the alligators or any of the wildlife because they end up relying on human interaction and feeding to survive. Once that happens, they kind of aren't afraid of humans anymore. And you can see alligator attacks or, you know, just unsafe animal and human contact. My name is Michael Turner. I'm from Fosta City, California, just south of the San Francisco airport.
and we run an electric boat rental business called Edgewater Marine. We rent out dump electric boats. They're eco-friendly, they're quiet, you drive it yourself, and you can bring the whole family and friends up to 10 or 12 people. We've been doing that for about 10 years, and we've been on Fair Harbor for about seven of them. And how have those seven years been for you? The best. The best? best, yeah. I used to book on Outlook. my gosh, Outlook!
It was a big relief to switch over to Fair Harbor. Victor, can you describe what you do here at Fair Harbor for the listeners out there? I lead the product marketing team and that team is responsible in making sure that all our clients understand our features, they know how to use them, they know where to find them, and if they have questions, they know where to find the answers. So we do the product marketing side of things, so we explain the value of our product.
We do the enablement side of things, so that means that we educate our internal teams on how to use the feature, to sell the feature, and we write the documentation. So we provide the help.
With Fair Harbor, you've been with us for a little bit now. How has it helped with your ease of use? How has it helped with your day-to-day running best cover once? It's drastic and I can't wait. Like I said, I brought my team with me here today. So I can't wait for it to make my life even better because they're actually in the process of learning how to use the staff accounts because up until now, due to some language barrier issues and phone app store availability, things like that, we haven't been able to get the staff accounts up.
prior to integrating Fair Harbor into my website, everything was old school. I wrote an invoice using a generic invoice generator app. It didn't look professional. I think it's definitely increased my client's trust in our company. They can clearly see the company name, the meeting point, the business licensing information. And I just feel that it really increases my image. It makes our company look so much more professional, and it's so much easier to just quickly send a payment link.
Everything's custom. I really love that about Fair Harbor because, you know, my business is not one size fits all. It's not black and white. Amazing. And they're each so special and yours sounds like so much fun. I mean, Fair Harbor, if you want to send me out on a private yacht to explore this, I pull my arm. mean, I guess I'll have to sacrifice. were at like 2 % online sales rate before we left our harbor. It immediately jumped to about a third of our sales within a year or two. And then since then, I think we're probably closer to 40.
support your children's center rather than something like that. One of the things that really allowed us to do was to be very nimble. know, we introduced Fair Harbor in 2018. So the thing that enabled us to do when COVID hit was we immediately switched to a time departure model that allowed us to manage our capacity. And it seemed like a benefit at a time, but it's been transformational for the business. It's changed.
employee satisfaction and compensation levels because they do work for utilities. It's also made customers very happy. They know where to be, when to be. And so we just wanted to have an online booking model. And what it really did was it created a platform that allowed us to transform the business in a lot of ways. Can you describe a little bit about your business model? How, what you do and like how, what is Destination Coupon and what makes it? Okay. So it's a destination based website and
folks go on there and it's a value site. So people go on because they're looking for deals in specific areas and so they go into a specific destination like Miami and we have all kinds of things in those destinations. I mean we have hotels, have car rentals, we have RV rentals and then we have attractions, things to do, tours, nightlife, have pub crawls, we have shows.
with all kinds of stuff like everything they can plan their whole vacation pretty much. It's a completely free website. You don't have to log in to get to use it. It's it's just free and we don't give any cookies or anything. It's like they they go they they purchase and they leave. There's no purchase done on our website at all. I mean thank God for Fair Harbor because it made it makes our life a lot easier on both sides with our partners and ourselves. But they
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They use the Fair Harbor platform to book and the bookings are done directly on the supplier's website. Yeah. So it's really, it works out great. I mean, we work with other portals as well besides Fair Harbor, but Fair Harbor is our favorite. I love the dashboard. I love the information that it gives me. I love that you said, thank God for Fair Harbor. That should be the new TGIF.
Right? Thank God it's Fair Harbor. I love that. That's amazing. All the hard work that you do on product, on working on our software, the way it looks, the way it feels, how our clients use it. Can you describe how does Fair Harbor, how is it, how is it an industry leader? What sets it apart from competitors or other softwares? Yeah. Yeah. With the history of Fair Harbor, the way that it started out. So our founders literally started working for a client and they experienced
all of the troubles and challenges that their client at that time faced. So they ingrained the DNA with looking at the challenges your client have and how to solve them with software, with code, basically. All along the way, we kept that mindset and we still do that. Another aspect is I think we're getting way better in launching faster, getting things into the hands of our clients as fast as possible.
for them to start playing around with and then providing us feedback with, okay, if you were to add this, it would bring me so much more value and listening to that feedback. I think that's what really is setting us apart right now, apart from the fact that we support 23,000 clients across the globe and you cannot do that if you're not a good piece of software.
What has been your favorite part about Spark and maybe share any key takeaways that you have for us? know, just meeting all the suppliers has been really interesting. There's, I mean, all kinds of things, all sorts of like swimming with manatees to like hiking and Denali. It's just like you go from one extreme to the other. They're super great people. They're,
I love entrepreneurs and so I just love the whole attitude and the energy is fantastic. And, you know, we see their side of it so we can, you know, we're selling their tours, but we're not providing the tour. And so to hear their perspective and their challenges is really enlightening for us. So, yeah. That's great. That's incredible. Have you made any new connections here with operators you might want to sell? totally. Yeah, that's amazing. That's great.
Yeah, we're excited. I took your tour and I was coming off the boat, what do you think I would say about your tour? What would I rave about? I think number one, you would be really thrilled that we accept Ben Mozell American Baking Apps, which is another thing actually that sets us apart. And we get really rave reviews about the food. We have chefs on each yacht and the food is freshly prepared on the boat. So if you come out with us and you say, Tiffany, my son really wants to catch a fish, you know, could we please try? We catch a fish.
We're catching the fish, we're killing the fish, we're cooking the fish, we're gonna make you tacos, ceviche. Yeah, the food is a huge takeaway and honestly just the views in Cabo, I can't take credit for that. It's just, it's stunning, it's a beautiful place. That's amazing and you mentioned your views, I'm so glad you did.
The I have for you next is, do you have a strategy about getting more reviews? I know reviews are so important to Google, they're important to consumers. How do you approach reviews? Two things that have helped me with reviews, especially since attending the last Spark conference, I signed up for PhotoFlow and I signed up for Werewolf Digital Waiver System. I have noticed a huge uptick in Google reviews, especially with Werewolf, because they're prompted afterwards, they're sent in nice, you know, thank you for joining us. Please click on Google. And with PhotoFlow, it's nice too, because...
not necessarily will they straight to review on Google or another platform, but if they hit the share button, it goes straight to their social and they're also leaving a social review as well, which is very helpful. That's awesome. Photoflow is here today, as you mentioned, so it's great to like make connections. You also mentioned that you're connecting with different affiliate opportunities, which is really cool. I love when operators sell each other.
I'm a little biased because I work at Fair Harbor, but I love when operators sell each other. think it's a great community, play on words there. And to elaborate on the affiliate thing, we actually met somebody who owns a company that does taco tasting tours in Cabo. So it was kind of meant to be. I want to say that I met him straight away and we're going to actually head to the one-to-one together, get him set up as an affiliate so he can offer taco tastings on our yacht.
Can you talk about Spark here in New Orleans and your time here? what's your, I know we have some content left, but what's your biggest takeaway so far? Ooh, I think that my biggest takeaway has been to really drill in on our booking funnel. I think we've a good job, but there's, I just came out of a Google, a GA4 panel that emphasized, you know, to really simplify.
that booking flow and it's something that we've worked at somewhat, but I think I realized the importance to spend a lot more time really just going to the essentials of that flow to, you know, increase our conversions.
Absolutely. It's so important to understand GA4. You and I were just talking off camera about how important it is as an operator. Maybe you don't need to be an expert in GA4, but you need enough to say, something's not right here, or what is my marketing team doing? Am I getting a return? Understand that there, you know, what, or at least that there is something that needs to be tweaked or improved, and then find the resources, whether it's, you know, the Fair Harbor, which there are resources available, or externally to really, you know, go in and make those changes as soon as possible.
money you're leaving on the table if you're not. I mean this has been great. It's that New Orleans is one of my favorite places to come anyway and most conferences are really kind of like boring and you're sitting in front of a screen and you're hearing information that you already knew but we've actually come here and got a lot of great information about marketing and how to add on to our sales and some Google analytics stuff and then the one-on-ones have been super helpful for us because it really let us dive into
the specific issues that we have with Sphere Harbor. So yeah, it's been a really great experience. man, biggest takeaways and lessons. I think most of them have honestly come from talking with other operators, just little things, you know, that other people are doing that we might be able to adopt into our own business or, you know, tweak a little bit and, and utilize really well. Or just, you know, ideas that
spark other ideas, stuff like that. I like what you did there. Ideas that spark other ideas. I love that. Learning more about the distribution network was huge this morning as well because I didn't realize it was a separate network in comparison to just our normal community. And also learning about the new GA4 analytic information. I feel like I'm going to generate some really helpful sales reports.
Absolutely. I always say it's really important. Maybe as an operator, you know, you're doers, you're out there, you're really connected with your businesses. And GA4 can seem a little daunting and a little boring, but I've been saying at this conference that it's so important to at least have a general understanding because if you're outsourcing that, it's so easy to be taken advantage of. And it's good to know what are my returns here? What is working and what's not working? What I love about Spark is you get, especially Spark, is you get to learn about what their harbor is working.
That's really the most important thing. And the best session was the opening keynote. You were there. I was there. Thank you for noticing. And it's also another way that we set ourselves apart here at Fair Harbor is a free event like this at Spark in the wonderful city of New Orleans. So that brings me it's so it's almost too much fun. I'm looking forward to our closing reception. Yes. When we go out with our clients on a boat together have fun. Yeah.
making that connection. that your favorite part about Spark is connecting with these people, operators, and do you have any anecdotes maybe or key takeaway from your experience here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of interest in Dock. And I think the reason why is because we have a stand now at our booth. And the minute you walk in, the first thing you see is our stand with Dock, which is our point of sale solution. And people notice the stand, they are drawn to it, they want to use it.
And then you see the light bulbs go on. I could use this in my own business. Ooh, how does this work? it's gonna actually let me self-service my clients. They can buy their own tickets or I can even put a stand somewhere else where I can sell my tickets. So yeah, that's been amazing. learning from clients that think out loud is the most valuable thing.
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It is nice to see the wheels turn. Exactly. I know exactly how I can adapt this feature. I know exactly how this will help me increase my bookings online. And now with Doc being able to take walk-up bookings with more ease of use. Definitely.
Can you share a little bit about how Fair Harbor makes your life a little easier? Maybe why you came to Fair Harbor? I know you just started four months ago. Right. I did start four months ago, but I've owned businesses in the past that have used other platforms and you could never get ahold of anyone. And it would be like the busiest time of Saturdays were a huge day for us. And I would be, there'd be a problem with my booking platform or whatever. And I would try to call another, you know, when I used another purveyor and Fair Harbor answers the phone.
before the third ring every time, spends as much time as they have to with me, really looks through the system while we're together. And I feel like the customer service support is the best customer service support I've ever had. Customer service, the customer service is phenomenal. Literally, I've told this to many people this weekend. Customer service with Fairbair is unmatched by any other customer service in any other part of my life. Like no matter what part of my life, you know, like from your cable TV to your doctor's office.
There's no customer service that exists like the JGSA. So since you've been with Fair Harbor for seven years, what has been the most ease of use feature for you? So we do 100 % of our bookings online. We don't take any over the phone. Wow. So everyone comes in, they check the tick boxes, they read everything and they pay. And then when they come to check in, we know who they are. So I chose Fair Harbor because I've worked for a bunch of different
guiding companies as a guide. And I've dealt with a lot of different reservation systems, reservation softwares, and the easiest as a guide has been Fair Harbor. The company that I was working for before starting Northern Epics was using Fair Harbor and it is a lot smoother from a guide experience than most of the other ones were. It didn't crash as much, all that stuff. So that was why I went with Fair Harbor initially. And you know, there have been a lot of other advantages that I've found out along the way coming from the actually
ownership and operations side. Air Harpers, they're pretty much step by step. They kind of walk you through everything and they're always 24-7 there to help you. With anything, any questions you have like today, we were surprised that you could just at a click of a button, you can change things and make it a lot easier for yourself. It's obviously the human factor, the way that we support, the way that we listen. You can tell here when you walk around at Spark, clients always begin with, I love Air Harper. You guys are
I'm the one driving my growth, my success, but there's always a but. And then they come with their ask, then they come with, I'm having this specific problem over here in this use case. And I would love for you guys to understand my problem here and maybe hopefully you can help solve it. And I think that that's, that's what's so fantastic about being here, having that client conversation and then understanding why it's such a problem for them.
Before I send you off for the rest of the conference, can you shout out your business for us? Give a little plug. Where can people find you and check out your website? hey, destinationcupons.com. Cupons, as in us. We'd love to just reach out, contact us, contact information's on the site. You can find us on our website. It's bestcaboyots.com. We're on Instagram as well as bestcaboyots.com. And you can email me, Tiffany, at bestcaboyots.com and I'll create a customized quote for you.
in probably 90 seconds or less.
I would love to go. That's a great invitation. We're Bricktown Water Taxi or Water Taxi LLC's company name. Bricktown Water Taxi is DBA. Bricktown refers to the historic entertainment district where we operate and that's in downtown Oklahoma City. You can find us at BricktownWaterTaxi.com. You can find us on NavoToursDirect.com and also we got Instagram, got Twitter and Facebook.
It's perfect! Amazing! Go see those canyons. They sound great. I'm sold. Very beautiful. Allons manger! That's Cajun for let's go eat. That's French for let's go eat. And that's our tagline. Hop on our cozy bus to learn the history, love the culture, and best of all,
taste the exciting food that we have in Cajun country at Cajun Food Tours, cajuntoodtours.com. We're Sunshine Paddle Adventures in Waco, Texas. Of course, you can find us on the web at, you know, sunshinepaddleadventures.com, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. Yeah. We're Northern Epics. You can find us up in Denali, Alaska. Whether or not you like hiking, you'll probably enjoy our tours. We'll tell you a whole lot about the plants, animals, ecology, geology.
basically teach you how it all works. If you want to know where to find cloudberries, we'll teach you where you can do that just by looking at the types of trees around there. So our website is northernepics.com and we'll let you figure out our phone number and everything else off there. The last wilderness swamp tours is our business. You can find us at lastwildernesstours.com and you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok. Michael, thank you so much for coming.
Thank you for being here on the podcast with me at Spark. And I look forward to partying with you and your wife on the boat later today. Ready a little bit. We're already packed and ready to go put life preserves on. We're going to be in good shape. Perfect. Thank you so much. Enjoy the conference. Thank you so much, Rebecca. What would you plug if you were, you know, the Fair Harbor ambassador of the world saying goodbye to our listeners right now? What would you encourage them to check out about Fair Harbor? So if you're new to it.
I think don't be afraid to come over to Fair Harbor because we've got incredible teams that will help you switch your business to our platform. That's really one amazing aspect of us. And if you're familiar with us, think, yeah, pay close attention to the amazing stuff that we release. I sometimes hear clients say...
Yeah, I know you email me, but you email me a lot. I tend to ignore them. Don't ignore those emails with product updates because I know for sure that there's stuff in there that's going to help your business grow faster. We launched combos, we launched memberships, we launched a bunch of updates for the dashboard.
Keep an eye on that. I would like to say that. I'm sold. I'm convinced. I've got to make sure I'm subscribed. Thank you so much, Victor. Thank you so much for being here at Spark. know it was a long way. show. Thank you. It's a long way from Amsterdam, so we'd to have you here in New Orleans. I hope you have a great rest of your conference. I'll see you on the boat later. Definitely. And we will check you all out later. Thanks so much. Bye.
FH Community & Podcast (00:00)
(00:01):
Welcome to Growth powered by Fair Harbor where we explore the strategies behind thriving tour and activity businesses. Whether you're just starting out or scaling up, this podcast is packed with insights to help you succeed. Now here's your host, Fair Harbor's Community Manager, Rebecca Cosley.
You're at Spark NOLA 2024, having a great time here in New Orleans. For those who don't know you, can you introduce yourself, your business name and how long you've been with Fair Harbor? My name is Donna. The business name is DestinationCoupons.com. It's a value site. So people go on because they're looking for deals in specific areas. My husband and I started it about 25 years ago.
We pretty much started with Fair Harbor like 24 years ago. My name is Tiffany. I own a company called Best Cabo Yachts down in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. We have three boats, a 45-foot Sea Ray, a 63-foot Sibana, and an 85-foot Viking Princess. What makes us unique is we don't, other than like trusted affiliates, which we're actually really excited about setting up here and learning more about, we don't really use third parties down there. It's primarily word of mouth. And you know, you're dealing with the people that own the boat.
This is my second full year of using Fair Harbor. My first year exclusively using it as my go-to master calendar reservation system. I'm Chad Huntington. I'm the owner of Water Taxi in Oklahoma City. Water Taxi on the Bricktown Canal and Pete Rustin is our COO. So it's about a 40 minute narrated tour that runs on a man-made canal in downtown Oklahoma City, right through the historic district of Lakeview.
tours and talk about the history of Oklahoma City and Oklahoma. We've been on a trip for Harbor since 2018. My name is Alvin Begay with Navajo Tours Direct, Northern Arizona, Page Lake Valley area is where we're from. a land-based tour. What we do is we in the city of Page, we shuttle people from Page to both upper and lower end of the Canes and the horseshoe bend. And what makes your tour so special? What do your customers get out of your tours? It's native owned, Navajo owned and
We offer our, what they call, prime hours within the canyon, which is one of the best lighting in the canyon. My name is Marie DeCote. I have Cajun food tours in Cajun country, South Louisiana, Lafayette. I have a little 14 passenger bus. We pick people up and we, I consider myself an ambassador for Acadiana. Acadiana is Cajun country. I'm very, very passionate about our culture, about our history, about what makes us unique.
And of course, I'm very passionate about the food as well. I have been with Fair Harbor since 2019. My name is Summer Shine. I own Sunshine Cattle Adventures out of Waco, Texas. I'm an avid kayaker and I'm always getting people out on the water. And I saw something on TikTok that was these clear kayaks that had lights on them. So I was like, I could do that in Waco. We don't have anything like that. There's no real experiences on the river in Waco. So I thought it would be a cool thing to bring to our community. And sure enough,
Trinidad, thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks for being in New Orleans here at Spark 2024. Can you tell us a little bit about your business that's on Fair Harbor? Yeah, absolutely. So we have a hiking guiding company up in Denali, Alaska. Big people on day hikes teach them a whole bunch about Denali and Alaska as a whole and try to make their entire vacation better. It's just one tour. We've been on Fair Harbor for two years. Awesome. I'll see how long we've been in operation. Amazing.
a spoon based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and we've been around now for 13 years. So we do a bunch of different experiences that I guess the ultimate goal is to have people connect with our destinations, whether it be our cooking class, our gamut of food tours, we do events for corporate groups, and then we work within the event side of different channels, you know, corporate, leisure, to push-eats, you know.
Amazing, and how long have you been on Fair Harbor? It'll be, ooh, I think it'll be eight years this year. My name is Sylvia Drinkwater. Our business is The Last Wilderness Swamp Tours. We offer eco tours in the Chapulia Basin. You know, we just respect the wildlife and the nature around us. So in the Chapulia Basin, you know, there's a lot of alligators and lot of critters. So we really don't handle those animals or respect the distance between.
us, you know, and in their space. We don't feed the alligators or any of the wildlife because they end up relying on human interaction and feeding to survive. Once that happens, they kind of aren't afraid of humans anymore. And you can see alligator attacks or, you know, just unsafe animal and human contact. My name is Michael Turner. I'm from Fosta City, California, just south of the San Francisco airport.
and we run an electric boat rental business called Edgewater Marine. We rent out dump electric boats. They're eco-friendly, they're quiet, you drive it yourself, and you can bring the whole family and friends up to 10 or 12 people. We've been doing that for about 10 years, and we've been on Fair Harbor for about seven of them. And how have those seven years been for you? The best. The best? best, yeah. I used to book on Outlook. my gosh, Outlook!
It was a big relief to switch over to Fair Harbor. Victor, can you describe what you do here at Fair Harbor for the listeners out there? I lead the product marketing team and that team is responsible in making sure that all our clients understand our features, they know how to use them, they know where to find them, and if they have questions, they know where to find the answers. So we do the product marketing side of things, so we explain the value of our product.
We do the enablement side of things, so that means that we educate our internal teams on how to use the feature, to sell the feature, and we write the documentation. So we provide the help.
With Fair Harbor, you've been with us for a little bit now. How has it helped with your ease of use? How has it helped with your day-to-day running best cover once? It's drastic and I can't wait. Like I said, I brought my team with me here today. So I can't wait for it to make my life even better because they're actually in the process of learning how to use the staff accounts because up until now, due to some language barrier issues and phone app store availability, things like that, we haven't been able to get the staff accounts up.
prior to integrating Fair Harbor into my website, everything was old school. I wrote an invoice using a generic invoice generator app. It didn't look professional. I think it's definitely increased my client's trust in our company. They can clearly see the company name, the meeting point, the business licensing information. And I just feel that it really increases my image. It makes our company look so much more professional, and it's so much easier to just quickly send a payment link.
Everything's custom. I really love that about Fair Harbor because, you know, my business is not one size fits all. It's not black and white. Amazing. And they're each so special and yours sounds like so much fun. I mean, Fair Harbor, if you want to send me out on a private yacht to explore this, I pull my arm. mean, I guess I'll have to sacrifice. were at like 2 % online sales rate before we left our harbor. It immediately jumped to about a third of our sales within a year or two. And then since then, I think we're probably closer to 40.
support your children's center rather than something like that. One of the things that really allowed us to do was to be very nimble. know, we introduced Fair Harbor in 2018. So the thing that enabled us to do when COVID hit was we immediately switched to a time departure model that allowed us to manage our capacity. And it seemed like a benefit at a time, but it's been transformational for the business. It's changed.
employee satisfaction and compensation levels because they do work for utilities. It's also made customers very happy. They know where to be, when to be. And so we just wanted to have an online booking model. And what it really did was it created a platform that allowed us to transform the business in a lot of ways. Can you describe a little bit about your business model? How, what you do and like how, what is Destination Coupon and what makes it? Okay. So it's a destination based website and
folks go on there and it's a value site. So people go on because they're looking for deals in specific areas and so they go into a specific destination like Miami and we have all kinds of things in those destinations. I mean we have hotels, have car rentals, we have RV rentals and then we have attractions, things to do, tours, nightlife, have pub crawls, we have shows.
with all kinds of stuff like everything they can plan their whole vacation pretty much. It's a completely free website. You don't have to log in to get to use it. It's it's just free and we don't give any cookies or anything. It's like they they go they they purchase and they leave. There's no purchase done on our website at all. I mean thank God for Fair Harbor because it made it makes our life a lot easier on both sides with our partners and ourselves. But they
(00:22):
They use the Fair Harbor platform to book and the bookings are done directly on the supplier's website. Yeah. So it's really, it works out great. I mean, we work with other portals as well besides Fair Harbor, but Fair Harbor is our favorite. I love the dashboard. I love the information that it gives me. I love that you said, thank God for Fair Harbor. That should be the new TGIF.
Right? Thank God it's Fair Harbor. I love that. That's amazing. All the hard work that you do on product, on working on our software, the way it looks, the way it feels, how our clients use it. Can you describe how does Fair Harbor, how is it, how is it an industry leader? What sets it apart from competitors or other softwares? Yeah. Yeah. With the history of Fair Harbor, the way that it started out. So our founders literally started working for a client and they experienced
all of the troubles and challenges that their client at that time faced. So they ingrained the DNA with looking at the challenges your client have and how to solve them with software, with code, basically. All along the way, we kept that mindset and we still do that. Another aspect is I think we're getting way better in launching faster, getting things into the hands of our clients as fast as possible.
for them to start playing around with and then providing us feedback with, okay, if you were to add this, it would bring me so much more value and listening to that feedback. I think that's what really is setting us apart right now, apart from the fact that we support 23,000 clients across the globe and you cannot do that if you're not a good piece of software.
What has been your favorite part about Spark and maybe share any key takeaways that you have for us? know, just meeting all the suppliers has been really interesting. There's, I mean, all kinds of things, all sorts of like swimming with manatees to like hiking and Denali. It's just like you go from one extreme to the other. They're super great people. They're,
I love entrepreneurs and so I just love the whole attitude and the energy is fantastic. And, you know, we see their side of it so we can, you know, we're selling their tours, but we're not providing the tour. And so to hear their perspective and their challenges is really enlightening for us. So, yeah. That's great. That's incredible. Have you made any new connections here with operators you might want to sell? totally. Yeah, that's amazing. That's great.
Yeah, we're excited. I took your tour and I was coming off the boat, what do you think I would say about your tour? What would I rave about? I think number one, you would be really thrilled that we accept Ben Mozell American Baking Apps, which is another thing actually that sets us apart. And we get really rave reviews about the food. We have chefs on each yacht and the food is freshly prepared on the boat. So if you come out with us and you say, Tiffany, my son really wants to catch a fish, you know, could we please try? We catch a fish.
We're catching the fish, we're killing the fish, we're cooking the fish, we're gonna make you tacos, ceviche. Yeah, the food is a huge takeaway and honestly just the views in Cabo, I can't take credit for that. It's just, it's stunning, it's a beautiful place. That's amazing and you mentioned your views, I'm so glad you did.
The I have for you next is, do you have a strategy about getting more reviews? I know reviews are so important to Google, they're important to consumers. How do you approach reviews? Two things that have helped me with reviews, especially since attending the last Spark conference, I signed up for PhotoFlow and I signed up for Werewolf Digital Waiver System. I have noticed a huge uptick in Google reviews, especially with Werewolf, because they're prompted afterwards, they're sent in nice, you know, thank you for joining us. Please click on Google. And with PhotoFlow, it's nice too, because...
not necessarily will they straight to review on Google or another platform, but if they hit the share button, it goes straight to their social and they're also leaving a social review as well, which is very helpful. That's awesome. Photoflow is here today, as you mentioned, so it's great to like make connections. You also mentioned that you're connecting with different affiliate opportunities, which is really cool. I love when operators sell each other.
I'm a little biased because I work at Fair Harbor, but I love when operators sell each other. think it's a great community, play on words there. And to elaborate on the affiliate thing, we actually met somebody who owns a company that does taco tasting tours in Cabo. So it was kind of meant to be. I want to say that I met him straight away and we're going to actually head to the one-to-one together, get him set up as an affiliate so he can offer taco tastings on our yacht.
Can you talk about Spark here in New Orleans and your time here? what's your, I know we have some content left, but what's your biggest takeaway so far? Ooh, I think that my biggest takeaway has been to really drill in on our booking funnel. I think we've a good job, but there's, I just came out of a Google, a GA4 panel that emphasized, you know, to really simplify.
that booking flow and it's something that we've worked at somewhat, but I think I realized the importance to spend a lot more time really just going to the essentials of that flow to, you know, increase our conversions.
Absolutely. It's so important to understand GA4. You and I were just talking off camera about how important it is as an operator. Maybe you don't need to be an expert in GA4, but you need enough to say, something's not right here, or what is my marketing team doing? Am I getting a return? Understand that there, you know, what, or at least that there is something that needs to be tweaked or improved, and then find the resources, whether it's, you know, the Fair Harbor, which there are resources available, or externally to really, you know, go in and make those changes as soon as possible.
money you're leaving on the table if you're not. I mean this has been great. It's that New Orleans is one of my favorite places to come anyway and most conferences are really kind of like boring and you're sitting in front of a screen and you're hearing information that you already knew but we've actually come here and got a lot of great information about marketing and how to add on to our sales and some Google analytics stuff and then the one-on-ones have been super helpful for us because it really let us dive into
the specific issues that we have with Sphere Harbor. So yeah, it's been a really great experience. man, biggest takeaways and lessons. I think most of them have honestly come from talking with other operators, just little things, you know, that other people are doing that we might be able to adopt into our own business or, you know, tweak a little bit and, and utilize really well. Or just, you know, ideas that
spark other ideas, stuff like that. I like what you did there. Ideas that spark other ideas. I love that. Learning more about the distribution network was huge this morning as well because I didn't realize it was a separate network in comparison to just our normal community. And also learning about the new GA4 analytic information. I feel like I'm going to generate some really helpful sales reports.
Absolutely. I always say it's really important. Maybe as an operator, you know, you're doers, you're out there, you're really connected with your businesses. And GA4 can seem a little daunting and a little boring, but I've been saying at this conference that it's so important to at least have a general understanding because if you're outsourcing that, it's so easy to be taken advantage of. And it's good to know what are my returns here? What is working and what's not working? What I love about Spark is you get, especially Spark, is you get to learn about what their harbor is working.
That's really the most important thing. And the best session was the opening keynote. You were there. I was there. Thank you for noticing. And it's also another way that we set ourselves apart here at Fair Harbor is a free event like this at Spark in the wonderful city of New Orleans. So that brings me it's so it's almost too much fun. I'm looking forward to our closing reception. Yes. When we go out with our clients on a boat together have fun. Yeah.
making that connection. that your favorite part about Spark is connecting with these people, operators, and do you have any anecdotes maybe or key takeaway from your experience here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of interest in Dock. And I think the reason why is because we have a stand now at our booth. And the minute you walk in, the first thing you see is our stand with Dock, which is our point of sale solution. And people notice the stand, they are drawn to it, they want to use it.
And then you see the light bulbs go on. I could use this in my own business. Ooh, how does this work? it's gonna actually let me self-service my clients. They can buy their own tickets or I can even put a stand somewhere else where I can sell my tickets. So yeah, that's been amazing. learning from clients that think out loud is the most valuable thing.
(00:43):
It is nice to see the wheels turn. Exactly. I know exactly how I can adapt this feature. I know exactly how this will help me increase my bookings online. And now with Doc being able to take walk-up bookings with more ease of use. Definitely.
Can you share a little bit about how Fair Harbor makes your life a little easier? Maybe why you came to Fair Harbor? I know you just started four months ago. Right. I did start four months ago, but I've owned businesses in the past that have used other platforms and you could never get ahold of anyone. And it would be like the busiest time of Saturdays were a huge day for us. And I would be, there'd be a problem with my booking platform or whatever. And I would try to call another, you know, when I used another purveyor and Fair Harbor answers the phone.
before the third ring every time, spends as much time as they have to with me, really looks through the system while we're together. And I feel like the customer service support is the best customer service support I've ever had. Customer service, the customer service is phenomenal. Literally, I've told this to many people this weekend. Customer service with Fairbair is unmatched by any other customer service in any other part of my life. Like no matter what part of my life, you know, like from your cable TV to your doctor's office.
There's no customer service that exists like the JGSA. So since you've been with Fair Harbor for seven years, what has been the most ease of use feature for you? So we do 100 % of our bookings online. We don't take any over the phone. Wow. So everyone comes in, they check the tick boxes, they read everything and they pay. And then when they come to check in, we know who they are. So I chose Fair Harbor because I've worked for a bunch of different
guiding companies as a guide. And I've dealt with a lot of different reservation systems, reservation softwares, and the easiest as a guide has been Fair Harbor. The company that I was working for before starting Northern Epics was using Fair Harbor and it is a lot smoother from a guide experience than most of the other ones were. It didn't crash as much, all that stuff. So that was why I went with Fair Harbor initially. And you know, there have been a lot of other advantages that I've found out along the way coming from the actually
ownership and operations side. Air Harpers, they're pretty much step by step. They kind of walk you through everything and they're always 24-7 there to help you. With anything, any questions you have like today, we were surprised that you could just at a click of a button, you can change things and make it a lot easier for yourself. It's obviously the human factor, the way that we support, the way that we listen. You can tell here when you walk around at Spark, clients always begin with, I love Air Harper. You guys are
I'm the one driving my growth, my success, but there's always a but. And then they come with their ask, then they come with, I'm having this specific problem over here in this use case. And I would love for you guys to understand my problem here and maybe hopefully you can help solve it. And I think that that's, that's what's so fantastic about being here, having that client conversation and then understanding why it's such a problem for them.
Before I send you off for the rest of the conference, can you shout out your business for us? Give a little plug. Where can people find you and check out your website? hey, destinationcupons.com. Cupons, as in us. We'd love to just reach out, contact us, contact information's on the site. You can find us on our website. It's bestcaboyots.com. We're on Instagram as well as bestcaboyots.com. And you can email me, Tiffany, at bestcaboyots.com and I'll create a customized quote for you.
in probably 90 seconds or less.
I would love to go. That's a great invitation. We're Bricktown Water Taxi or Water Taxi LLC's company name. Bricktown Water Taxi is DBA. Bricktown refers to the historic entertainment district where we operate and that's in downtown Oklahoma City. You can find us at BricktownWaterTaxi.com. You can find us on NavoToursDirect.com and also we got Instagram, got Twitter and Facebook.
It's perfect! Amazing! Go see those canyons. They sound great. I'm sold. Very beautiful. Allons manger! That's Cajun for let's go eat. That's French for let's go eat. And that's our tagline. Hop on our cozy bus to learn the history, love the culture, and best of all,
taste the exciting food that we have in Cajun country at Cajun Food Tours, cajuntoodtours.com. We're Sunshine Paddle Adventures in Waco, Texas. Of course, you can find us on the web at, you know, sunshinepaddleadventures.com, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. Yeah. We're Northern Epics. You can find us up in Denali, Alaska. Whether or not you like hiking, you'll probably enjoy our tours. We'll tell you a whole lot about the plants, animals, ecology, geology.
basically teach you how it all works. If you want to know where to find cloudberries, we'll teach you where you can do that just by looking at the types of trees around there. So our website is northernepics.com and we'll let you figure out our phone number and everything else off there. The last wilderness swamp tours is our business. You can find us at lastwildernesstours.com and you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok. Michael, thank you so much for coming.
Thank you for being here on the podcast with me at Spark. And I look forward to partying with you and your wife on the boat later today. Ready a little bit. We're already packed and ready to go put life preserves on. We're going to be in good shape. Perfect. Thank you so much. Enjoy the conference. Thank you so much, Rebecca. What would you plug if you were, you know, the Fair Harbor ambassador of the world saying goodbye to our listeners right now? What would you encourage them to check out about Fair Harbor? So if you're new to it.
I think don't be afraid to come over to Fair Harbor because we've got incredible teams that will help you switch your business to our platform. That's really one amazing aspect of us. And if you're familiar with us, think, yeah, pay close attention to the amazing stuff that we release. I sometimes hear clients say...
Yeah, I know you email me, but you email me a lot. I tend to ignore them. Don't ignore those emails with product updates because I know for sure that there's stuff in there that's going to help your business grow faster. We launched combos, we launched memberships, we launched a bunch of updates for the dashboard.
Keep an eye on that. I would like to say that. I'm sold. I'm convinced. I've got to make sure I'm subscribed. Thank you so much, Victor. Thank you so much for being here at Spark. know it was a long way. show. Thank you. It's a long way from Amsterdam, so we'd to have you here in New Orleans. I hope you have a great rest of your conference. I'll see you on the boat later. Definitely. And we will check you all out later. Thanks so much. Bye.
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