SHREWSBURY, England, March 24, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A swift decision by Love2Stay, Shropshire's award-winning glamping and caravan site,at the start of the pandemic to develop a self-service application allowing guests to manage their cancelled bookings has seen record numbers of app usage.
With the majority of its front-office staff furloughed, Love2Stay quickly recognised that facilitating the volume of booking changes and cancellation requests would be a huge challenge when the first lockdown was declared in the UK in March 2020.
An early decision to develop a bespoke self-service application in partnership with their long-standing digital marketing partner, Built For Now, has proven to be a key strategic investment as the app has generated thousands of transactions since its launch in April 2020, saving the business a significant amount of administrative costs and, importantly, making sure customers were always in control of their holiday plans.'
Guests may use the app to cancel or change a scheduled booking and obtain an instant e-voucher for the full price of their reservation. The voucher comes in the form of an electronic code that can be used to make a reservation in the future. The whole procedure takes less than a minute to complete and can be done at any time of day or night on the Love2Stay website. No need to call, no need to email.
"At the start of the pandemic, we had to make some difficult decisions," said Chris Skitt, Park Manager of Love2Stay. "Investing when we had no revenue coming in was stressful, but we had to reprioritise and strategically choose where to focus our time and efforts. This has included making sure that innovations coming out of this current crisis be focused on increasing occupancy, improving efficiencies, ensuring guest and employee safety, and driving revenue or decreasing loss, all of which leads to improved guest experiences. The self-service application has more than met these objectives and will become a permanent function on our website even after the pandemic is over."
In a study conducted by Steven Van Belleghem a best-selling author in customer service strategy, it was found that 70% of customers now expect a company's website to include a self-service application.
Nick Spiteri, Managing Director at Built For Now said, "To succeed during the pandemic, sometimes quick decisions are critical and for small businesses this is often a huge challenge. When Covid-19 wreaked havoc on Love2Stay's booking revenue, they refused to accept defeat and focused immediately on assessing new market needs and shifting demands.They anticipated that the best value they could offer their guests during lockdown would be quick response times, and that the quickest way to achieve that goal would be to give them leverage of their own bookings. We got to work on the app and had it up and running in record time, with a tonne of positive reviews from guests."
About Built For Now
www.builtfornow.co.uk
About Love2Stay
www.love2stay.co.uk
High resolution images are available on request.
Nick Spiteri - 07887 556692, nick@builtfornow.co.uk
