In July 2015, Ski Banff Lake Louise Sunshine successfully launched the Spotlio Customized Booking Integration on their existing booking system. In November 2015 Ski Banff Lake Louise Sunshine activated the new Responsive Booking Module for lift tickets. Since then their online lift ticket sales have exponentially increased. Ski Banff Lake Louise Sunshine is the marketing and booking organization of the three world famous ski resorts within the Banff National Park: Banff Norquay, Sunshine Village and Lake Louise Ski Resort.

 

Want to know how Ski Banff Lake Louise Sunshine was able to achieve this level of growth? To capitalize on the explosion of mobile traffic, you must have an evolving strategy and the right set of tools. Here are 3 key learning points from the Ski Banff Lake Louise Sunshine’s 2016 Case Study that will help you learn how to maximize direct online ticket revenue from your customers:

 

1. Install a single solution for both web and mobile booking

 

It’s no secret that travellers are increasingly transitioning to their mobile devices to plan and book their holidays. It is now mandatory to offer an excellent online booking experience that is optimized for mobile devices. In fact, Google makes it mandatory with their SEO update from April 2015. If you’re not ready, you stand to lose what soon will become the majority of your customer base.

 

The first order of business is to reduce the bounce rate for your booking process. So make sure that your online lift ticket shop follows a seamless all-mobile approach. This will immediately increase the volume of total online transactions. As you optimize your mobile booking process, it becomes easier for potential customers to begin and complete the booking transaction. This isn’t only on all mobile devices but on bigger computer screens too.

 

2. Plan for constant evolution

 

In the 21st century, the only constant is change. You must ensure your mobile booking platform has the flexibility empowering you to adapt the process around your business rules. Ticketing and booking engines rarely provide this capability well enough to allow managers to adapt to customers’ needs. Any solution you build or buy should make it easy to add additional components to package options. This allows your customers to get more comfortable booking through mobile devices.

 

With our new, mobile-optimised booking site, we increased our online sales at an amazing pace. Working with Spotlio makes it easy to achieve these sales results and gives us full control over our communication with customers throughout their booking experience, says a happy Melissa Callaghan, Ecommerce Manager at Ski Banff-Lake Louise-Sunshine.

 

Avoid error messages and corner cases like the plague! Have a plan to return the user to the previous screen if an error occurs. If you must display a pop-up during the booking process take extreme care that it makes sense. Also, make sure it doesn’t frustrate the user. Keep it simple and don’t make them think. Your reward is a drastic reduction in cart abandonment.

 

3. Use The Best Tools Available For Customer Tracking and Optimization

 

There are amazing (and affordable) tools available that allow you to better understand your customers’ needs, their behavior on your site, the changing market habits, and shifts in their booking priorities. Remember, the only thing we can count on is that EVERYTHING will change. So pay close attention in order to spot new trends early.

 

To help you maximize online revenues, use the following 3 tools on top of your online shop for tickets to stay alert to the changing needs of your audience. With the right tools and constant optimization, learning how your customers behave becomes fast and easy.

 

Google Tag Manager
To quickly and easily improve your customer tracking and the optimization of your mobile website and mobile apps use the new Google Tag Manager. By constantly gathering data about where users are moving around on your responsive booking page, you’ll better understand what is working well and where to improve. Further A/B testing becomes easier and the average value of your shopping carts will increase. Sometimes a simple change in color or placement of a button can make a massive difference in conversions.

 

Google Analytics
The Google Analytics extension for the Chrome browser lets you analyze your booking page traffic in real time. Specifically, watch your bounce rate – where are they coming from, how long are they staying, and where are they going after they leave – all of this data helps you better understand what is influencing your visitors’ behavior and learn how to increase your conversion rates.

 

Spotlio Mobile Booking
Caution: we’re about to toot our own horn here. The Spotlio Responsive Booking Interface with its Lift Ticket Module on top of your booking (e.g. Inntopia) or ticketing system is fully optimized for both the Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics. It puts you in the driver’s seat to continuously optimize the booking experience and drastically increase your overall online booking revenue in the shortest amount of time possible. The Lift Ticket Module does not require any extra configuration by the lift operator. It has a simple yield management for the operator and presents the lift ticket prices in a beautiful responsive calendar that helps the customer identify the best offers in the blink of an eye, and on any device.

 

Now, this is just a start, but if you keep these simple strategies in mind while focusing on the overall mobile booking experience, you will find yourself outperforming your online revenue targets much faster than you ever thought possible.

 

What can SPOTLIO do for YOU? Benefit from a free 1-1 chat with one of our experts today and let’s find out together!