I'm the office manager at Grand Canyon Camper Village in Tusayan, AZ. We currently use Campground Master. No online system being used. I know Hercules works with CM, but I was told it's too expensive. Our WIX website has a form you fill out to make a reservation, which gets emailed to us and we have to enter each one into CM. Total office staff entering these consists of two people, and I'm one of them. It's hard to keep up with them, and by the time we get around to some of them the people have made their reservations elsewhere. We can't take deposits, so we get many no-shows. I did some research on different systems: Campspot, Bonfire, and a few others. I like the "Cloud based" systems better than CM's backup to a flashdrive. Our main computer went down at the beginning of last season and the flash drive back up didn't want to cooperate with the other computer at first. If there was a way to transfer the customers, reservations, site info, etc. from CM to another system, I would be all over it. I'm trying to research new systems to use, enter reservations as we receive them in our current system, do the monthly invoices for our long-term residents....I just don't have the time. Does anyone have any suggestions for an easy to set up, cloud based system? I know there are some that are basically "free" to set up and the cost is per reservation made using it. We use a gateway for our credit card system: Cayan/TSYS, so we would need something compatible with that as well. Thank you in advance for any helpful advice.
I am a retired software consultant who helps parks with recommendations and advice, I've had opportunities to work with all of the top softwares and each one has it's own functionality and business model. They either make money on the transactional model or on a monthly fee, or both. The highest functionality with the lowest cost at this point is Staylist. There is no monthly fee and the companies business model is by making money on the online transaction fee that is charged to the customer. At this point, there is no charge to you for any reservation you make offline. They also honor the ownership of your data and do not share it with anyone. I'd be happy to answer any direct questions you may have. I don't receive any compensation for recommendations.
Hey!! I am grateful for these wonderful stories. I'm just starting out in an IT firm and don't have much experience yet.
