2020 has been anything but a normal year, but in hindsight, I’m truly amazed by how far our Zauians have come, and the accomplishments achieved even with the year’s challenges.
I’m happy to say though, that if anything, we’ve come out of this much stronger, resilient, and determined to make an impact in restech and our greater tourism community.
🌟 Wrapping up the Year — Bright Spots & Notables for 2020
✅ Customer First
When the pandemic struck, we wanted to ensure our customers had the tools they need to survive, then thrive.
The ripple effect of travel bans and restrictions meant a flood of cancellations and refunds for our customers and major disruptions to cash flow.
Understanding these challenges, Zaui offered relief payments and programs where we could. This meant, goodwill solutions such as putting our customers’ systems on hold or in hibernation as they navigated through the tricky months, figuring out the appropriate next steps for their business whether it would be to hunker down for the time being or resume operations next year.
We also assembled a resource centre for further business guidance, financial aid resources, and a dose of inspiration and positivity.
At the end of the day, it was essential our customers were able to count on us and for our team to provide support where we could. This will continue to be a value we uphold in 2021 and beyond.
✅ Innovation Never Stops – Operations, Self-Service and Revenue Generation Features to Support Our Community
Pandemic or not, it was crucial to keep the spirit of innovation alive at Zaui. But it was also clear our business and the product roadmap needed to adapt to the changing landscape and new realities.
Specifically, our customers needed an alternative way of generating revenue and operational support when running on a skeleton crew.
In 2020, we were able to introduce and release operations and self-service consumer features to really help lighten the load, as well as revenue generation solutions that serve as new ways for our operators to succeed.
Here’s a quick list:
- *NEW* Online Booking Engine to help keep your operations safe by taking your bookings 100% online and contactless
- Private Tours to offer guests a safe, private experience simply by converting standard tours to private bookings.
- Self Editable Bookings enables your guests to make simple booking changes when plans change, so your team won’t have to.
- Service Disruptions help communicate route disruptions and cancellations effectively to potential and booked guests.
- Experience Gift Cards make great experiential gifts, and for operators, a revenue-generating option for boosting sales during the holidays and low season.
- COVID Waivers & Pre Arrival Questions
- Simple Inventory Management & Price Change Options
✅ Partnerships in 2020
Forging long-lasting relationships has always been important to Zaui. In 2020, we announced a few exciting partnerships including being named a Stripe Verified Partner, and integrations with Reserve with Google and Klook, which will lay the groundwork for stable, secure payments as well as an expansive distribution network when travel is on the rebound.
🚀 What Does the Future Hold for Zaui and Travel in 2021 and Beyond
For Travel – What we can look forward to is the rollout of vaccines, a signal for us all to anticipate a return to travel in Q3 2021, first with business travel then followed by leisure. In the time being, domestic tourism remains a great opportunity to attract locals and for locals to be able to explore and appreciate their own backyard while showing their support.
For Zaui – Innovation never stops and there are always exciting features in the pipeline to boost consumer confidence, help operators balance operation demands and more.
Crisis calls for change, and luckily this trial by fire (2020) we’ve all been put through has made us more resilient, battle-hardened, and more driven to help deliver what we’ve always set out to do, make reservations easy, in the new year and beyond.
