Customer: Deep River Waterpark in Merrillville, Indiana.
Jim Basala knows waterparks. With over 30 years experience in park management, time earned as the former Chairman of the World Waterpark Association, and a great team behind him he knows what it takes to make a park successful. Mr. Basala, along with Sasha Mateer (General Manager), and Chris Nawracaj (Operations Manager) of Deep River Waterpark shared with us a few of their challenges and what they have done to improve business.
Challenges: There were challenges with the previous point-of-sale software that were affecting business. While admissions weren’t a problem, other aspects of their existing system simply weren’t up to par with what the waterpark needed. Jim says, “the previous software possessed functionality issues that made it difficult to operate, and their solution for retail functionality was a third party software that couldn’t communicate with the admission system. So we could not bundle retail or food items with our admission packages.”
Solution: Deep River Waterpark implemented Gatemaster Enterprise Edition. Sasha commented that the best reason for switching to Gatemater’s Point-of-Sale and Ticketing System was because it is a streamlined program with full functionality, out-of-the-box. The system combines both retail and ticketing into one easy-to-use system that requires no third party programs (and their added integration problems).
Results: With regards to switching from a moduled system, Chris stated, “It’s nice to know that we’re not going to get hit down the road with extra costs as we want to add on extra features. Everything is already included in one streamlined program.”
Sasha reports that they are also very pleased with Gatemaster’s reporting functionality. With the old program, every report had to be custom created in SQL. With Gatemaster Reporting you can even customize it for date, department, staff, item, etc. The benefits to the guest services team are huge since they can no watch ticket sales and track the flow of traffic around the park. They can look and see what any individual register is doing at any moment!
ECommerce Challenge: Deep River Waterpark was using third-party ecommerce software to sell season tickets and day passes online. This created inefficient situations where they had to do double data entry (and lots of paperwork) to combine the sales from the third party software into their main point-of-sale program.
Solution: Deep River Waterpark added Gatemaster’s eCommerce just a few months ago and have been exceptionally pleased with how it has simplified business and freed up a lot of time. Online sales now go directly into the same database as on-site sales with zero additional paperwork or data entry.
They’ve also added cabana sales to their online shopping cart and have been pleasantly surprised with the number of cabana rentals. Customers are able to go online and reserve when they are ready; creating less busy work for the park staff and real convenience for their customers.
Results: Deep River Waterpark is now in a much better place with their all-in-one system. Tracking inventory is much easier, ticketing goes smoother than as ever, and sales are far easier to make. Jim Basala says, “Gatemaster is a simple, intuitive, Apple-like product” and Sasha revealed that the eCommerce solutions found in Gatemaster are crucial for success in this industry. Learn more!
Read more about how Gatemaster has helped other parks:
Creative by The Evoke Group