The travel industry has changed a lot since the beginning of the pandemic. Now that things are finally beginning to resemble a pre-pandemic world it’s important to recognize that some changes to traveler behavior most likely won’t return to the ‘before times’. One of those changes that we believe will be consistent is greater flexibility with cancellations and travelers willing to pay to have peace of mind around their bookings.
Our sister company TripShock introduced changes to their cancellation policy and a flexible trip protection plan in 2021 and they have seen a strong uptake and low claims. The data show that many travelers are happy and willing to pay a small premium to have the flexibility that trip protection can offer and they rarely use it (i.e. ‘insurance’).
With that data in hand and requests from our WaveRez partners for a feature that can enable that functionality, we developed an update to our options feature set. We are happy to announce that we now offer a ‘paid percentage based option’ that allows watersport operators to provide their customers with a selection upon checkout that is calculated via a percentage of the sale. This can be used for more than just trip insurance (e.g. dock fees), but we’re going to use the ‘trip protection’ example in this article as we believe it exemplifies this new feature.
With that in mind we’ll put forth an example of how this feature could be built out for a WaveRez partner.
How to create Trip Protection within WaveRez
Option Name: Trip Protection
Tool Tip: Trip protection is a non-refundable policy that allows you to cancel your booking prior to departure for any reason. You will be fully refunded of your rental costs, booking fees, taxes, & pre-paid tips if you have to cancel last minute.
Value name (selection box text): Add Trip Protection
Value %: 10
The example trip in focus will now present the customer with Trip Protection selection option upon checkout, where they can add or decline the 10% extra insurance option.
Most watersport businesses using this type of feature keep their current cancellation policy intact and self-fund this type of trip protection for their customers who want it. In general, most customers who cancel do so in the standard cancellation window, along with regular weather cancellations that every operator deals with.
Example of Trip Protection Monthly Revenue
Sales: $100,000/month
Avg. order: $500
Orders: 200
Trip protection take rate: 15%
Orders w/ trip insurance: 30 (200 * .15)
Trip protection rate: 10%
Approx trip protection rev @ 10%: $1,500/month (($500 * .1) * 30)
Would an extra $1,500 hitting your bottom line each month be meaningful? We believe so, especially when you consider that generating it is basically overhead- free (outside of an hour or so of set up).
We look forward to seeing how our WaveRez partners implement this feature and how their bottom lines can improve using it. Please feel free to contact [email protected] to learn how to set this up for your trips.
Here is how the feature is setup on both the backend of WaveRez, as well as the customer facing booking portal:
Feature Set Up:
Step 1
Step 2
Booking portal view upon checkout:
% based total reflected upon final checkout page:
About the Author
Greg Fisher
