In this blog post we want to dive into the relationship between WaveRez and TripShock and how their synergy could benefit your watersports business. TripShock is a B2C activity and tour marketplace that helps travelers find and book exciting experiences in various destinations across the USA. TripShock partners sign up and list their activities on the platform and TripShock markets those experiences across a wide range of mediums. TripShock has an incredibly strong presence in its many locations and can help a new business get off the ground very quickly or an established business fill unsold seats. Over the past decade of doing business in the watersports industry, TripShock’s owners realized the need for a niche reservation system in that space. Using much of the development and data from those years of experience they worked to develop that company, which eventually morphed into WaveRez and was officially acquired by TripShock in 2019.
With the history out of the way let’s discuss the importance of an OTA online travel agency (OTA) like TripShock. Many business owners have grown disillusioned with OTA’s because for the most part they just throw up an activity on their platform and don’t do anything else. Thus it languishes, gets few if any sales, and generally leads to a sour relationship (and for the most part the larger OTA’s could care less). TripShock on the other hand, is very selective with what suppliers they add to their platform, actively market those products that the suppliers provide (with huge portions of their own $$ by the way), and provide resources to help the supplier sell more and improve their products. To provide this service, they charge a commission on each sale, which we’ll speak on now.
Ah commissions, everyone loves to hate them. If you’re thinking about them in a singular way it absolutely makes sense to detest them, they directly cut your profit margin. However, we would encourage business owners to change their perception of them and embrace them, for a couple of reasons. First, marketing is hard, period. You’re going to spend money one way or another on marketing and if you don’t you’ll most likely fall behind your competition or simply get less and less business. So, thinking of the commission as a marketing expense, which it literally is, helps soften the blow and internalize the value. Second, for new businesses, in many cases it takes years to compete on the playing field with established businesses. However, by paying a simple commission you can be competitive right out of the gate getting sales, brand recognition, reviews, etc. which are critical components to building your business.
We’ve established the value of TripShock, so how does that relate to WaveRez…
Glad you asked. Being a sister company of TripShock, WaveRez is directly integrated with their platform. Thus a partner who is using both TripShock and WaveRez can have all of their inventory seamlessly synced between the 2 platforms. If a customer books a rental on TripShock, that availability will be removed from the WaveRez side (i.e. your website and backend phone/walk up bookings) in real time. This is a tremendous advantage for businesses who cannot afford to overbook and tick off their customer base. Both WaveRez and TripShock expect our partners to have a breadth of ways that they receive bookings (i.e. a % from your website, a % from phone calls, a % from TripShock, and a % from walk ups). Using both platforms together allows all of those areas to be fully synced and your inventory up to date in real time. This can free up an incredible amount of time for your employees to direct to other $$ generating endeavors. Best of all is that any orders that come through TripShock do not pay any booking fee to WaveRez (phone and walk up orders are excluded as well) so you never double up on fees being a partner of both platforms.
Another massive benefit to partners on both platforms is that they receive free Featured Placement on TripShock. This can be worth upwards of $4,500 a year in value depending on your location/category and can produce wildly successful results. Featured Placement is a pay-to-play option within TripShock that allows partners to drive more traffic to their listings. We won’t go into more detail in this article on the specifics of Featured Placement as you can learn more here: <link to partner solutions>. Suffice to say that this reason alone has been worth it for many partners.
To wrap up, WaveRez has a plethora of incredible features that propel your business forward with our TripShock integration being just one. However, the power of the 2 platforms combined can literally help create a successful business overnight, we have seen it happen more than once (feel free to give us a call and we’ll be happy to discuss those stories. 🙂
To learn more about how WaveRez and TripShock can help your business thrive please reach out to Luke Schulze via phone or email: 413-458-1721 / luke@waverez.com
We are looking forward to hearing from you!
About the Author
Greg Fisher
