Ski Famille gets up to date

Those readers of the blog who know me personally will already be aware that under my laid back exterior lurks a slightly OCD business and tech geek. There, I feel better for getting it out in the open.

With no new properties or resorts for next winter, this summer has become all about focusing on doing everything better. This means lots of hard work before December – for everyone that assumes ski industry folk spend the summer months kicking back in the garden this is quite normal – but it opens up some exciting opportunities for the geek in me.

So what are this summer’s big developments that will help us get even better and giving families cracking ski holidays come next winter?

New Website
This is not too geeky, more a thing of beauty! Our existing site hasn’t been with us for long, but putting it together taught us a lot about websites and the gubbins behind them. We decided that we needed to start all over again and do it better. Not an easy decision but definitely the right one.

Navigation for clients will be far easier and there will be a few nice and simple gadgets that allow clearer overviews of availability and pricing. All in all it will let potential guests quickly and easily understand what we do and how we do it … and, of course, why they should book with us rather than someone else.

I can even show you a sneak preview; just don’t tell the guys at ThinkingJuice as I’m not sure I’m meant to let anyone else see it.

Sneaky peak >>

Booking system
Very geeky this one, I like it. Tracking who we have on what week, when they’re arriving, where they’re staying, what ages all the children are and which ones don’t like broccoli is trickier than you might imagine. To date we’ve had an Access database cobbled together by a few of us and a very nice chap called Graham. Backed up by Sheila (UK end) and Fiona’s (French end) phenomenal attention to detail it’s worked, but has not been without it’s “challenges”.

We are now firing on all cylinders using a real live proper booking system with tailored reports, easy tracking of payments, infinite numbers of options and a clear audit trail showing who did what on a booking and when. Mighty geeky to get excited by this development but I am, very. Big thanks to the team at TourCMS for understanding and adapting to our slightly odd way of doing things.

Phones
Every business I know of is pretty much dependent on a phone system and to date we’ve always had something pretty basic that seemed to do what we wanted. Our recent office move prompted me to talk to Convergence Communications up in Cambridgeshire re what might be feasible, even for a small firm like ours.

Phil at Convergence was very accommodating (as one would expect of a skiing addict and long term fan of Les Gets) and came up with some great ideas. We now have a home worker in Suffolk and Fiona out in France on our main office phone system via their internet connection. We can also give resort management a handset when the winter hits, they plug it into a router and away we go.

On reading this back it doesn’t sound like much but it’s quite a thrill, honestly. Ease and clarity of communication are essential to ensure families have everything they need on holiday and this will help enormously.


So those are our three main tech related developments for this summer. There are lots of other things going on but if you thought the IT stuff was boring you really don’t want to read about a complete overhaul of health and safety polices and our new training schedule for winter driving …

Chris
www.skifamille.co.uk