Ranch Bookings was our first endeavor into adventure travel technology. As an online reservation management system, Ranch Bookings addresses a real problem in the industry: nearly 90 percent of guest ranches are only capturing one-third of their most qualified leads. With the average travel package cost of around $7,000 per family, guest ranches are missing out on significant revenue opportunities. This is compounded by inefficiencies with ranch operations, leading to customer satisfaction issues and internal communication challenges.
Ranch Bookings has been helping ranchers resolve these issues since the platform was first launched in 2016. Using real-time calendar availability, online deposit payments, and more, Ranch Bookings enables ranchers to provide customers with a better reservation experience that starts from the first click. Guest information is captured up front and is centrally located for ranch teams, ensuring a positive guest experience throughout and after their stays. Ranches also have access to powerful analytics, sales dashboards, marketing tools, and more to maximize every opportunity.
Adventure travel is projected to be a trillion-dollar market globally by 2021, and it’s been growing 70% year-over-year for a decade. Intuitively, you probably think the distribution channels for this market are mature and established to sustain that rate of growth, but that’s not true. Why? Because of only 43 percent of bookings are made online.
The adventure travel market is the last holdout for thousands and thousands of brick and mortar travel agents. This is because that type of travel is the furthest thing from a commodity. It has to be custom — or it’s not really an adventure. Planning those trips and packaging them into a great experience is a lot of work, and the technology that was built for basic hotels and flights has not been able to make the dent we would expect.
At Check-In Sherpa, we’re developing adventure travel technology that connects travelers with authentic experiences and makes providers more efficient and profitable in the process. Our first platform, Ranch Bookings, experienced exponential growth over 2018 alone, proving the need for efficiencies that only technology can provide. As adventure travel continues to grow, so too will the solutions that Check-In Sherpa provides.