Background
Royal Gorge Rafting & Zipline Tours (RGR) (www.royalgorgerafting.net) is a Colorado vacation destination that provides whitewater rafting, zip-lining tours, vacation rental lodging and a full-service bar & grill restaurant.
RGR is the # 1 whitewater outfitter in the Royal Gorge and has grown to be Colorado’s largest rafting outfitter in the Royal Gorge. The company also runs the region’s #1 zipline tours, featuring both the Classic and Extreme tours. In the peak of summer, tours run every 30 minutes.
To provide guests with a full experience, Royal Gorge Rafting & Zipline Tours offers premium accommodations and a bar and grill that has been consistently voted the region’s #1 Bar & Grill.
The company has been rated as top destinations for both its rafting and zipline tours since 2007.
The Challenge
RGR serves a significant number of participants per day. This high volume created a severe bottleneck in getting guests their photos. The RGR photo team was spending a considerable amount of time delivering photos to guests via USBs (flash drives), which caused operational pains and lost revenue.
The process of burning a trip’s photos onto USBs (flash drives), for each guest, consumed significant staff time, required considerable manual labor and dedicated support. The slow process frustrated guests, caused a backlog and potential customers were lost because they did not want to wait while on vacation.
The staff had to manually manage, organize and backup large amounts of media every day, consuming time and requiring manual labor. This also required time to be spent training photo staff and guides on how to properly manage photos.
The company had to support guests after they left as they either wanted to buy their photos or there was an issue with their USB. This support required additional staff resources, during the busiest times of the year, to ensure high levels of customer satisfaction were maintained or exceeded.
The company had to dedicate staff and accountant time to predict the quantity and price of USBs (flash drives) to purchase for each season.
The Solution
Royal Gorge Rafting and Zipline Tours wanted a solution that would help improve their operational efficiency, reducing the strain on their staff and prevent errors.
The company was also looking for a way to improve the customer experience. Heather Ingraham, Course Manager at Royal Gorge Rafting and Zipline Tours says, “We want to be the highlight of each guest’s vacation. When a guest looks back on their trip, we want to be the one thing they remember.”
“In finding the product created by the PicThrive team, we saw immediate value as to how it addressed our pains,” says James Whiteside, Owner at Royal Gorge Rafting and Zipline Tours.
The company used the entire suite of PicThrive’s offering. This consisted of tablet-based kiosks, the Workspace and the Online Store.
And, their rafting photo was a winner in the 2021 PicThrive photo contst.
in Conclusion
The Results
According to James and Heather, PicThrive significantly improved the efficiency of the Royal Gorge Rafting and Zip Line Tours’ photo program. Photos used to be a cumbersome process, consuming too much time and labor, now it is easy.
James stated, “the time saved is innumerable! Life saver! “
When using PicThrive, staff no longer felt overwhelmed, customer satisfaction improved and photo revenues** increased by 25% year-over-year.**
All the staff do now is drop photos onto PicThrive, a process that takes seconds and is easy to learn. Automatically, photos are made ready for guests on to buy in-store and online.
Heather reported that PicThrive significantly reduced staff training times for RGR and guides were more likely to help out because they felt comfortable with the platform. Additional time savings were discovered when using PicThrive to manage photos. The platform made organizing photos significantly faster and it was easier to find photos from previous days.
RGR saw PicThrive help improve customer satisfaction as photos were no longer eating into staff time; it was just as efficient for guests. Kiosks comforted guests, letting them be in control of their photos and they could know exactly what they were buying. There was less pressure on guests as they could purchase in-store or online.
Photos via PicThrive provided more value to guests as they preferred receiving digital photos to their phone over getting a USB (flash drives). They liked having more options with what they could do with their photos, for example, being able to share immediately from their phone.
“More people understand how to use a tablet than a flash drive these days,” says Heather, “USBs (flash drives), require significantly more work for the guest.”
It also saved the company time and headaches from having to constantly order USBs (flash drives).
PicThrive provided support for RGR’s guests, which helped relieve staff from photo related questions like printing or unzipping files, so the company could remain focused on daily operations.
According to Heather, “we’re not losing customers anymore and we can service more guests in a shorter amount of time.”
About PicThrive
PicThrive is the leading photo/video sales and marketing platform for tour and activity operators. It makes photos and videos fast, easy, mobile & more profitable for tour operators.
