About
Sail San Diego
Since 1985, Sail San Diego has cherished and shared what they call “the gift of the sea” with locals from and visitors to their home city. They’ve become a San Diego staple, and a moderate climate makes for an idyllic location for sailing all year long.
Over the years, Sail San Diego amassed a crew of boat captains with more than 50 years of combined experience on the seas. Their tours range from casual sightseeing tours of San Diego Harbor and sunset sails to whale watching adventures and bachelorette cruises—and the owners, Tim and Michele Hanley, love it so much they still take guests out on the water themselves.
The Problem
When Cal Muir, Director of Sales & Marketing, joined the company, he immediately saw a need for a new online booking system. “Customers trying to book would call us all the time because our booking and checkout processes were very confusing,” Muir said. “We got about 30 calls a day about this and had to spend a lot of time on the phone sorting it all out.”
Things weren’t much better on the back end, with administrative and analytical functions being just as convoluted as online booking. “It got to the point where I would have rather done it all by hand,” Muir said.
Going hand-in-hand with a confusing online reservation system was the suspicion that potential customers were abandoning the checkout process before completing a booking. “We could see that people were dropping out,” Muir said, “but how many were we losing to other tour operators in the area?”
The Solution
Muir looked into other online booking software options, and Peek’s simplicity and diversity made him recommend it to Sail San Diego’s owners. “Reservations are made properly,” Muir said, “and everything’s in one place. We now get about a third as many calls as before.”
And as suspected, the streamlined online reservation system helped lead to an increase in bookings. “Since we started using Peek, our online bookings have increased by 40%, and we’ve gotten a lot more interaction on our website,” Muir said. “I have to turn my phone on silent now because I get booking notification dings from the mobile app every few minutes.”
Peek Pro did more for Sail San Diego than just fix existing pain points. “It streamlined everything,” Muir said. “It syncs with all our calendars, and makes it super easy to communicate with staff and follow up with customers. It saves me at least two hours every day.”
Muir also praises the new features that the Peek team rolls out in regular fashion. “I absolutely love the new booking flow, which has increased conversions by over 50%,” he said, “and the ability to take deposits helps even more with conversion, especially with private charters, which are typically bigger sales.”
