One to watch: Respax

With over 150 ResTechs and Booking Systems now available globally, there is one system that here, at Bookable Tourism, we recommend to watch. In the Australian market, ResPax has been around for over 20 year predominantly servicing the Cairns region in Northern Queensland, and yes, it's ANOTHER system with a "Res" at the start of their business name.

This booking system, has been built by Industry from that region back when they realised they needed a system to power their businesses, and have the ability to connect into trade.

So, I hear you thinking "if they have been around for so long, why am I only hearing about them now?" and that is a good question. They predominantly serviced larger tourism operators and built according to their needs. While tech evolved, they were limited to legacy architecture which impeded on their ability to grow beyond their region and client base.

I now hear you thinking "so why am I looking out for them?". During the COVID years, they took the opportunity to modernise their system and improve the user experience. Now, when you look at ResPax, you'll find a sleek, easy-to-use system that even small businesses can benefit from, with all the powerful features they've developed over the past two decades. When you look at this system, you can tell very quickly that is has been built by industry and not a bunch of IT guys.

A few standout features beyond standard features we noted included:

• Inbuilt full scale CRM. They have incorporated SugarCRM to be native to the platform making it easy to manage customer information. You can also add rules to purge identifiable data (think passports and the like).
• PCI - they don't actually need to be PCI as the check-out has a pop up of the payment gateway directly for credit card processing. No credit card ever touches the system. Think of that as another level of security for your business.
• They can mange private tours  - full quote functionality and have the option to convert to a booking in one click.
• Pricing - you can include your breakeven so you can easily view profitability of a tour and departure.
• It can be set up to manage accommodated tours, and lodge based experiences.
• Can set up automated availability releases
• Pick up/ drop offs - has the travel times build into the back end to automatically determine correct pick up times.
• Distribution - robust nett rate management and you can upload contracts, payment terms (credit status)
• Can do General Admission ticketing as well as scheduled departures

There is a lot more to the system that you can discover for yourself, however these were the stand out features we noted (based on our 20% difference rule).

Regarding pricing, as of May 2023, they charge 2% for bookings made through digital channels and 0.5% for manual entries. There are no licensing or setup fees, and they even include 10 hours of training.

ResPax recently got National Parks as one of their clients, which is a big deal since government agencies have strict processes for choosing partners. This tells us that ResPax is definitely one to watch in the reservation technology world.

You can learn more about them here.