Arrivals, departures and getting paid.

If your marina or harbour accepts visiting boats, you probably focus on giving them a warm welcome and making sure you get paid.

A warm welcome and super on-site experience is all about the quality of service you deliver to customers. Great customer service is 90% having a well-trained team who love their jobs, and 10% having systems that support the team.

Here’s now the 10% should work:

Visitor arrival

Any system needs to provide a simple way to manage future reservations, knowing which boats are due in, what berths are available, and easy ways to communicate with booked boaters.

If all team members have access to the system, everyone can pull up the information they need when they need it. While the most-used occupancy view is the calendar, map and tile views give a different visual layout for the team on the dock.

And it’s not just about internal processes. Online reservation systems are becoming more common – when was the last time you booked a hotel room by phone? While online systems can seem impersonal, they do give customers the flexibility to take action at times that suit them. Choice and convenience is what customer service is all about, and that’s what we’re supporting with the Booking Request feature.

Online systems can automate communications, freeing-up your team from basic admin so they can focus on higher-value actions, like talking to customers on the dock. How useful for visitors when an email pings in with a reservation confirmation, welcome from the marina manager and link to the marina map? It’ll cut your no-shows, and give the visitor the detail they need to make a confident and safe landfall.

Having a suite of template emails covering a range of topics makes it easy to send customers personalised welcome and departure messages, plus storm or tide warnings and even satisfaction surveys. 

Visitor departure

People on holiday can be fickle creatures, and by-and-large, that’s what visiting boats are. If the weather is nice, they may want to extend their stay, or maybe the kids are bored, so they want to leave early. The berth is a bit blown-on, so they want to swap to another location.

Your system needs to be able to accommodate these changes quickly and easily. Click a boat name and get the option to swap berths, extend the stay or depart early.

We put all visitors on a single screen so you can see who is in, boats due to depart, who has overstayed, who has paid (or not). You can send an invoice or add extra nights to an order, clear anyone who already left and track which berths they’ve occupied.

It’s intuitive and saves the hassle of owners forgetting to pay or staff forgetting to ask for payment.

Visitor depart screen

Resident movements

If your marina doesn’t have the luxury of dedicated visitor berths, additional income is dependent on utilising spaces when resident boats are out. Rather than scribbling this info on a sheet of paper or the ops board, capture it straight into the system.

A couple of clicks to release a berth for a period and all the team knows it’s available for visitors. The berth holder comes back sooner – one click to delete the release.

Berth release screen

Visitor reporting

A suite of occupancy reports, including arrivals and departures, overstays, releases, occupancy by type, and asset, gives the teams on the dock and in the office the tools they need to do their jobs.

How can we help your business?

If you’d like to talk about how Harbour Assist can help you to manage visitors in a friendly and efficient way,  contact us for a chat.