Difficulty making transient reservations and confirming/declining boater inquiries based on marina availability.
Queuing reservations via new standardized online reservation process, automating collecting and storing customer details.
MacDougalls' revenue focus has traditionally been seasonal slip holders. With only a handful of slips dedicated to transient guests, MacDougalls' accommodates more reservation requests by filling slips left empty by cruising seasonal customers.
MacDougalls' joined Dockwa in 2016 to maximize their revenue. Since joining, MacDougalls' uses Dockwa to easily manage inventory, tracking which seasonal slips are available at any given time.
Furthermore, MacDougalls' can communicate directly with their boaters through the Dockwa app, making it easy to know customers' arrival and departure times, so they can fill their inventory with transient guests.
Through better inventory management and increased communication with boaters, MacDougalls' increased their transient slip revenue by a whopping 525% since 2015.
Falmouth Harbor is the most convenient starting point to cruise Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket and coastal New England. The MacDougalls’ marina spans over five waterfront acres of Falmouth’s inner harbor. It lies at the heart of scenic Cape Cod and its beautiful cruising waters on the Vineyard Sound.
Click here to make a reservation at MacDougalls' Cape Cod Marine
Because of the nature of MacDougalls' operation, they often don't know whether they'll have availability for specific transient boaters until later in the day. Once they know if they can facilitate more transient reservations (after their daily dock walk), they return to the outstanding reservations and confirm and decline based on this updated availability.
Thanks to Dockwa, our transient occupancy reached 105% for the first time ever.
MacDougalls' Consolidated the Reservation Process by Requiring Reservations to be Made Online
Within one season, MacDougalls' was confident in Dockwa's ability to meet their needs. They took it one step further in 2016, requiring all transient boaters to reserve online and by app. If a boater calls the marina, MacDougalls' no longer takes the reservation over the phone; instead they instruct the boater to visit their website or the MacDougalls' page on Dockwa to make the reservation.
Many marinas would be wary of hanging up the phone with revenue left on the table, but MacDougalls' didn't – and doesn't – see it this way. They were willing to risk losing a phone customer in exchange for the benefit of having an organized queue of Dockwa reservations ready for the team to confirm as space became available.
Because of this new process, they were able to grow their transient revenue 5x compared to the previous 3+ seasons, just by "killing the phone." Before, they were concerned about over-booking so they ended up declining many reservations. Now, with Dockwa, they have complete control of which boaters they can take, and are able to confirm many more reservations.
30% of all Dockwa employees are former marina operators.