Bookacamp - camp booking backoffice

Backup strategies 2021/03/22

In mid-March, Europe's largest data center near the river Rhine burned down. Various media reports, that the data of many server and website operators have been irrevocably lost, because backups were missing or in in the same data center. This rises the question, of how Bookacamp can deal with the valuable data of its users?

Data - in the case of Bookacamp, these are databases and files (photos and documents) of both the users of Bookacamp as well as Bookacamp itself. The most important data is in the databases, which are backed up every 10 minutes. Backup means a full copy of the databases is created and written to a file. These backup files are immediately fully encrypted via GPG (Wikipedia) and after that they are - not readably by third parties - copied to a cloud service. This procedure alone is sufficient to guarantee almost 100% data backup. Another protection mechanism is, that with every backup on the data is copied to a failover system at another data center operator. The same procedure is used for files, here the backup takes place twice a day.

Another mainstay of the backup strategy is protection against ransomware (Wikipedia). Often times, the character of this malware is, that all data, backups included, is encrypted by this malware and you must buy the key for decryption . The only effective protection against this is to keep your own backups unreachable for the malware. For this reason, Bookacamp performs Offsite Backups once a quarter

Last but not least, backups are of no use if they are not regularly tested and imported into test systems to check the recovery processes. Bookacamp has automated this process so that every transfer to the failover system tests the recovery process. In addition, completely empty operating systems are started every morning, necessary packages are installed and the current backup data is imported - this ensures that Bookacamp is up and running on the new server in a short period of time.

Bookacamp Free trial

Autor: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

Customers book HanseMerkur travel insurance directly in Bookacamp 2021/03/04

Bookacamp celebrates the first insurance policy on March 2nd

After Bookacamp published the payment by direct debit in february, a month later the next big highlight follows: From now on, Bookacamp's users can offer their customers the booking of a travel insurance with HanseMerkur directly during the booking process. Bookacamp is proud to work in partnership with the HanseMerkur. The selection of insurance products is part of the negotiotion between the tour operator and HanseMerkur and they are adapted to the needs of the tour operator. The insurance products protect parents from cancellation costs, as well person and property damage.

How does it work?

After the tour operator has found the perfect products in communication with the HanseMerkur, only the agency number of the tour operator must be stored in Bookacamp. Then the tour operator decides at the push of a button whether the billing happens via direct accounting (billing directly between customer and insurer) or agency accounting (billing between tour operator and customer). Bookacamp individually determines the insurance offers for each booking during the booking process and stores them until the booking is confirmed by the tour operator. The insurance is automatically reconfirmed, so that there is only little effort for the tour operator and customer.

The integration with the HanseMerkur is now available for every tour operator and agent from Bookacamp.
If you want to learn more about the integrations of Bookacamp, please register a free demo account.

Bookacamp Free trial

Autor: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

Bookacamp & Berlitz Germany integrate their systems 2021/01/25

Bookacamp serves many tour operators, tour agents and event organizers as a daily tool for organizing your work and is always looking for ways to improve standard workflows. A widespread time waster arise at the interfaces to third-party systems, for example during transmission of bookings between a travel agent and the tour operator. Where in the past bookings were sent by fax, it is now possible to establish seamless integration between different providers.

System integration is now available between Berlitz Germany and Bookacamp, so that bookings can be transferred from Bookacamp to Berlitz at the push of a button and the annoying forwarding of booking data via email can be omitted. This procedure is not only more time-saving than before, but is much less susceptible to errors than copying from emails.

It works that simple:

Bookacamp's agency system offers an option of connecting to Berlitz with a single click to activate.
A Berlitz booking is reviewed and confirmed directly in Bookacamp by the travel agent.
All confirmed bookings are automatically delivered through the interface to Berlitz.
The bookings delivered are processed at Berlitz and (back)confirmed through the interface.
Done.

The interface is immediately available to all Bookacamp users free of charge.

If you want to learn more about Bookacamp's interfaces, please register a free demo account.

Autor: Mathias Methner

Link of the article

Shopping with Bookacamp 2021/01/18

What does Bookacamp have to do with shopping?
Not much, actually. The special thing about today's story is the integration of Bookacamp on the Website from hockeyshop.de and sportshop.com through our partner Sportscampus. Sportscampus has been organizing sports camps for young people for over 20 years. Started with hockey, meanwhile Sportscampus offers golf and tennis camps, even international ones.

Bookacamp offers extensive opportunities for collaboration with external agencies. This includes the access to the agency portal, which each user can set up him/herself. In addition, there is the possibility of assigning bookings via agency links to the agency and thus builds an affiliate and partner program.

At the beginning of the year, Sportscampus is offering an early bird discount for a short time. It is worth registering now.

Bookacamp Free trial

screenshot hockeyshop

Autor: Mathias Methner

Link of the article

Bookacamp Redesign

1303 updates files later 2021/01/08

Bookacamp's birthday was in January 2015 - 6 years ago - and we are proud to have processed tens of thousands bookings for tour operators, travel agents and organizers of online and offline events. One of the success factors of Bookacamp is the constant continuous improvement of every component. We are particularly grateful for the many ideas, tips and messages that we have received from already 147 users and would like to say a big thank you for it.

A lot has happened in the 6 years. Addons and features were added and now it was time to update the entire user interface of Bookacamp. 1303 changed files, 45,213 changed and 134,964 deleted lines of source code. What an amazing number.

The new interface is more modern, looks smoother and uses the latest browser features to give both, the users of the Bookacamp Backoffice, but also the many thousands of parents, children and event participants, a special experience when booking camps and registering for events. In particular, the increasing number of users with mobile devices benefit from larger fonts and controls and better loading times.

Feel free to register your demo account and see our new user interafe in action.

bookacamp logo

Autor: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

Updates in December 2020/12/05

✨ Our Updates

Hygiene regulations
In order to provide customers with binding information about hygiene measures during the booking process, the settings contain a link to the hygiene regulations. Those regulations then must be confirmed on the last step of booking by the customer.
Online events
Corona has increased the number of digital meetings. Part of the registration process often is sending access data and links to Zoom, Skype, Teams or Webex. This information can now be stored directly at the event to make it available as placeholders for emails. In addition, it is now also possible to enter the start and end time.
When creating the voucher code, a field for entering free text now appears. There you can store information about why the voucher was issued.
Directly when configuring the session you can now decide whether the booking confirmation should be sent or not.
A new voucher can be selected - a voucher code as percentage value. This type completes the vouchers, which could previously be issued with a fixed value amount.

😎 Counselor Addon

Document upload
The application from counselors is often supported by official documents, such as the police clearance certificate. In order to simplify the submission process, it is now possible to send an upload link where the counselor adds the documents to their own profile by themselves. New uploads appear on the Counselor dashboard and can be reviewed from there.
Consents
The question of whether photos can be taken or not can also be important for supervisors. Just like for bookings and events, it is possible to activate consents for camp counselors, which then can be confirmed during the initial registration.

⭐ Feedback-Addon

Feedback per Camp
The feedback from customers can now be aggregated by camp on your own site. The integration per session is still possible.

Autor: Mathias Methner

YAGNI & KISS 2020/11/12

Bookacamp is a software product for the (youth) travel industry and combines excellent knowledge of software development with professional knowledge of the requirements and processes of the travel industry. But there is always the question of which features and functionalities are required in which form in order to make the communication and administration of bookings / events as easy and quick as possible. Since Bookacamp was founded in 2015, we have been working very closely with product owners and pilot customers. That's nothing special - that's how agile software development works. The special thing is that the product owners are users and partners of Bookacamp themselves, i.e. the tour operators and travel agents whose requirements arise from day-to-day business. Bookacamp is very happy to receive this open input.

In order to keep an overview of all requirements, we use a ticket system. In the last 5 years, 1811 tickets have been created in this way, 94 of which are currently open in different sizes. Bookacamp uses two principles to decide which problem a ticket is going to be developed and for what there may be a different solution.

YAGNI - You Arent't Gonna Need It

Every feature and every problem solution has different characteristics and there are often dozens of ways to expand a feature. The tightrope act is to decide which functionalities will be used later and whether there is someone who needs a solution. Unless a requester exists, we often decide not to implement something at the current time and wait to see how usage develops.

KISS - Keep It Simple & Stupid

Some things are easier to do than others - but the general rule is that a simple and understandable solution is preferable to a complex and complicated one. This applies to decisions in software development as well as in the structure of user interfaces and processes.

Autor: Mathias Methner

Updates in October 2020/10/20

✨ Our Updates

Saved filters
Many table can be filtered and sorted directly on the website. Bookacamp's backoffice is now able to save those filters locally. After reload those filters are re-applied on the table.
Filtered booking list in agency login
Some agencies are only allowed to sell specific camps. In the agency settings you can decide to apply a filter for the agency, which makes the bookable camp lists a filtered subset for this agency.
Voucher amount for cancellation
If you cancel a booking and transform the already paid amounts to a voucher, you now have the possibility to change the voucher amount directly in the cancellation process.
Shortened booking form
Diectly when setting up a camp, it it possible to decide, if the selection of non-mandatory services is hidden during the booking process, which makes the booking simplier and faster. Especially when your travels are total package travels it makes sence to have a look at this.

😎 Counselor Addon

Individuel contracts
If you have your contract in Word format (docx), it is possible to replace special placeholders within this document for personalization and send it as pdf via an email. That features makes paper handling much more simplier. Get in contact with us to get more information about that.
Waitinglist
Also counselors now have the possibility to be moved to a waitinglist, if all placements for the travels where already made.
Image Upload in questionnaire
The questionnaire has been extended to support an image upload directly in the questionnaire. You now can decide to place this upload in the registration form or in the questionnaire.
Documents with expiry date
The requirement upload features an expiry date, where you can set the end date of a document and get an reminder for umcomming expiries on your dashboard.
If neccessary the counselor addon has its own setting for a privacy declaration.

Autor: Mathias Methner

Updates in July 2020/08/08

June usually is a bit quieter, so major changes to processes and new features do not disturb the ongoing season. A few minor things are still worth mentioning:

Automatic booking confirmation
To save more time for standard processes, bookings can now be automatically confirmed by the system. The invoice is generated and sent as soon as a new registration arrives. The new feature can be (de-)activated in the settings menu as required.
Minimal event registration
For free (information) events it can be useful to keep the hurdle for registration as low as possible. This minimal registration only requires the name and e-mail of the applicant.

Hostel Summary / Accommodation Information 2020/07/08

At the latest shortly before the trip, it is necessary to inform the hostel about the number of people arriving, times, information for the kitchen and bookable extras such as meeting rooms and disco. There are so-called hostel messages, with the help of which you can send all the information to a hostel at the push of a button. A particular strength of this notification is noticeable when the assignments of the counselors to the camps have been made in the system, because then all information is bundled together.

This feature is immediately activated for all users and can be accessed via the administration of the sessions. Is there a lack of easy mailings in your current system? You can start a non-binding demo directly on this page.

Autor: Mathias Methner

Updates of June 2020/06/05

43 tickets have been closed and implemented since March. A selection of the most important innovations follows here:

Temporary VAT reduction
From july 1st to december 31, 2020, the federal government of Germany decided to cut 3% on the standard tax rate and 2% on the reduced tax rate. What effects this has on the invoicing of the travel industry, whose service period often does not correspond to the invoicing period, must now be clarified. Bookacamp will make the adjustments to the software available before first of july.
RSS - Don't miss any news
Many mail programs and browsers have a feed reader to subscribe to news. Bookacamp's german blog now delivers the newsfeed readable for feed readers. So you don't miss any more information.
Automatic synchronization between agency and organizer
In order to further minimize the coordination effort between the travel agent (agency) and the organizer, the availability of the free spots can now be automatically synchronized in the background. The current cycle is 1x on the hour.
Yes / No answers with consent
It happens, that information is important when booking. An example is the question of whether a child can swim or can participate in certain sports. Consent has been expanded to request a decisive answer on the last page of the booking process.
Various options per session
Among other things, it is possible to decide per session, whether information about the t-shirt size or class level of the participant should be obtained. All in all, it is worth looking at the entire Expert Mode tab when creating a session to get to know Bookacamp's high degree of customization.