Ferry Reservation Software made easy

Category: Articles

  • Kiosk Design for Usability

    Kiosk Design for Usability

    More than any other application, a kiosk stands or falls as a result of the interface design. While it’s important to have an attractive design which makes people want to walk up to the kiosk, the underlying architecture is equally important. Signage and location also play a large part as with any point of sale communications.

    Kiosk interface designs normally do not work for websites, and vice versa. The differences are much deeper than just the size of the buttons. The 7 key differences between kiosk design and web design:

    1. Choosing to use the kiosk:
      The user needs to see the kiosk, understand its purpose, and want to use it – from a distance and in busy locations. Attract loop, shroud and signage design are key, and locations need careful planning.
    2. Wide range of users:
      The user experience must cater to a wide range of people – including those who don’t normally use computers. Directions and cues should be obvious and not rely on standard online behaviour.
    3. Completion of a specific task:
      Most successful kiosks help the user to complete a specific task. The task and how to achieve it must be easily and quickly understood by someone who has not used the kiosk before.[blockquote indent=”yes” ]The user experience must cater to a wide range of people – including those who don’t normally use computers[/blockquote]
    4. Distractions, noise, and crowds:
      Even with careful planning the kiosk location may be crowded and full of distractions. The signage and interface should prepare the user at the start for any information they may need – credit or EFTPOS cards so they are not scrambling to find these half way through a transaction.
    5. Speed of response is essential:
      The user may be standing, carrying bags, or hanging onto toddlers. Speed and responsiveness is very important.
    6. Privacy:
      A balance needs to be struck between displaying the information to the user and displaying it to everyone else in the room.
    7. Touching the screen:
      Usually with their right hand. Some parts of the screen are more easily accessible than others, and while touching the screen, some areas will be blocked from view by the arm or hand. Buttons need to be large enough to be easily touched and far enough apart to avoid touching more than one button at once.

      (Courtesy of our partner Phosphor: http://www.phosphor.co.nz/kiosk-interface-design)

  • Increasing Revenue

    Increasing Revenue

    The Ferry Plus integral revenue management (RM) application is a result of our many years of experience in providing software to ferry operators worldwide. Here we describe a simple ‘nested’ RM configuration and show its integration with ticket pricing and the reservation process. [blockquote indent=”yes” ]Although there are complex algorithms at the heart of the ferry+ RM, using RM is intuitive.[/blockquote]

    The basis of the application is structured on what we call yield classes.  Our example shows three yield classes, high, medium and low (Figure 1). While there is no limit to the number of yield classes, in operation, a small number will likely suffice. It should also be noted that the yield classes reside in what we call a ‘market’ and a traffic type.

    Fig 1
    Fig 1

    The use of the markets allows RM to be discrete for each market. For example, a ferry operator may take bookings from multiple geographical areas and within each area, accept bookings from several types of traffic (e.g. tourist, group and freight). Of course, RM works equally well across a single market.

    Ticket types are also associated with the yield classes. Ticket types are simply an umbrella categorisation for ensuring that specific tickets sold are taken from the correct yield class. Figure 1 shows that any flexible ticket sold is from the high yield class while all saver tickets and all discounted tickets sold are from the medium and low yield classes respectively. Ticket type names, for example, ‘All saver tickets’ in Figure 1, are used to group tickets that generate similar revenue to an appropriate yield class. [blockquote indent=”yes” ]When making a reservation, ferry+ checks both physical and yield class space[/blockquote]Examples of tickets grouped to a yield class are shown in Figure 2.

    Fig 2
    Fig 2

    The high level example in Figure 1 shows that ticket prices can then be varied across tickets and departures. Figure 2 drills down to show a more detailed explanation for the medium yield class for those tickets sold as the ticket type Saver. The example shows four specific tickets designated as being in the Saver ticket type, which in turn is selling from the medium yield class. Each of the four tickets will have a set of ticket rules and conditions applying to it covering its validity and the basis on which it can be sold.

    When making a reservation, ferry+ checks both physical and yield space, offering applicable tickets where both categories of space are available. The example (Figure 2) shows clearly that in addition to ensuring the saver fares come out of the medium yield class, that they also have their own price which can vary across departure times.

    This is a brief introduction to Ferry Plus RM, please contact us for more information and a practical demonstration.

  • Looking Back

    Looking Back

    Prior to establishing  ferry+, we owned a company called travellog systems.  All ferry+ personnel were previously involved in the development of a range of integrated reservations systems for ferry operators, and railway companies on a global basis through working with travellog systems.

    Our core skill set is centred on our general experience of reservations and ticketing, particularly for ferry operators. Specifically, this experience encompasses the design, building and implementation of large scale ferry reservation systems.

    Our experience, combining the design, development and implementation of systems for many major ferry operators worldwide, resulted in many customers including:

    • Buquebus, Spain
    • Clipper Navigation, USA
    • Emeraude Line, France
    • Fast Cat, New Zealand
    • Ferry Maroc, Morocco
    • HSD, Norway
    • Interisland Ferries, New Zealand
    • Irish Ferries, Ireland
    • Merchant Ferries, UK
    • P&O Scottish Ferries, UK
    • Red Funnel Ferries, UK
    • SeaFrance, France
    • TT Lines, Australia
    • Wightlink Ferries, UK

    Other major implementations  undertaken were for rail operators and include:

    • TranzRail, New Zealand
    • Great Southern Railway, Australia
    • Rail Europe, France
    • Alaskan Rail, USA

    We also provided the system to Eurotunnel for their ‘shuttle’ operation which carries passenger and vehicles (cars, vans and coaches) on the train under the English Channel from Folkestone to Calais.

    As individuals, we have a proven track record for innovation in the use of technology for ferry operators and major milestones achieved include:

    • First Unicorn (EDI) requesting system
    • First combined Unicorn (EDI) host and requesting system
    • First integrated tour and ferry system
    • First ferry Internet reservations system
    • Multi time zone handling
    • Multi sector reservations
    • Multi lingual application software
    • Integrated freight system
    • Integrated check-in
    • Integrated deferred revenue
    • Integrated point of sale system

    We have also been deeply involved with technical standards within the travel industry in general and in particular with the Unicorn EDI standards. We have also chaired the Travel Technology Initiative (TTI) Unicorn standards committee which controls the messaging standards used in the Unicorn protocol.