Drupal-based booking and events management

The Challenge

Anglian Water Parks (AWP) needed a web-based booking system to handle over two million visitors per year across seven sites and 11,000 acres.

The system had to handle a range of activities, including camping, fishing permits and events. Tight, secure integration with multiple cloud-based CRM systems and payment gateways was essential.

The first phase of the platform went live in early 2024, with new modules and features being introduced on a regular basis.

Results

1,500+

Hours saved in Admin

£1,000,000+

Revenue in Y1

20,000+

Transactions in in Y1

+ Visitor Experience

Increased Visitors

+ Data

Live Data Dashboards

+ Scalability

Enabling New Attractions

The Requirements

AWP’s key objectives were to provide visitors with an easy-to-use booking experience and their internal team with a range of tools that made a potentially complex admin and booking process as simple as possible.

AWP’s team needed to be able to manage bookings, availability, visitor flow, seasonal peaks & troughs and other factors critical for running their locations and facilities at scale. Each service offered at those locations was handled in a slightly different way (seasonality, capacity, pricing, etc), so the system needed to adapt depending on the booking or purchase being made.

The Solution

Flexibility

The platform was built to handle complex booking requirements while ensuring a seamless mobile experience for a wide range of users. For example, users can now book fishing permits, instantly access catch/return rules specific to their selected lake, and conveniently display their permit on a mobile device, eliminating the need for printed copies.

Security

Security was key in developing the solution, ensuring the safe management of sensitive data and secure payment processing from multiple sources. The platform was designed to comply with PCI and GDPR standards, maintaining data protection and regulatory adherence. Data retention policies were implemented, and SSO integration was added to provide streamlined and secure user access.

Automation

Automating processes and bringing efficiencies to the operations team was a key focus in developing the platform. It was designed to save time, enhance quality, and reduce costs while improving service levels. The system streamlined the management of availability, seasonality, and features across multiple sites, with integrated reporting tools to support strategic operational decisions.

Integration

Tight integration to CRM platforms, including HubSpot and Microsoft Dynamics, along with a PCI-compliant payment gateway through Freedompay, incorporating POS integration was developed using a mixture of custom and Drupal Contrib Modules. Admin tools were developed for desktop, tablet, and mobile, providing management capabilities and access to payment processing information, enabling AWP staff to efficiently assist customers with booking and payment support.

Mobile

All aspects of the platform was optimised for mobile and low-bandwidth environments, ensuring a seamless experience for both administrators using tablets and visitors, particularly fishermen. Mobile-friendly versions of the application were developed to facilitate access to passes, catch return reports, and other key features.

Support

Providing prompt, expert support was essential, given the high volume, customer facing nature of the solution. The entire Adaptive help desk team was trained on the platform, covering both admin and end-user aspects, ensuring efficient assistance when needed. Uptime and performance were prioritised through regular maintenance and updates to keep the system running smoothly.

The Approach

Discovery

A series of workshops and planning sessions were carried out with AWP stakeholders to be certain that all requirements had been captured.

The system needed to meet AWP’s needs now but also to be flexible for the future. AWP had plans to expand the system as they grew, rather than needing to go through a similar exercise in just a few year’s time so extensibility was important.

Prototyping

Rather than develop something which we thought would meet AWP’s needs, we created rich, interactive wireframes of how the system would look and operate.

This meant that both AWP’s internal users and trial customers could test the proposed new system and provide feedback. Doing this meant we could refine the User Experience (UX) and Admin Experience (AX), so that all users ended up with a system that matched their needs.

Technology

The platform is based on Drupal CMS with Drupal Commerce with bespoke development, adhering to Drupal methodologies, to better match the system with AWP’s needs.

Development included building the complex booking rules for different possible bookings, integrations with HubSpot and Microsoft Dynamics and the creation of a dynamic calendar system integrating with Mobiscroll touch-friendly calendar framework.

Key platforms include:

Fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365

PCI compliant Freedompay payment gateway implementation

Full integration with Hubspot Marketing & Sales Hub

Drupal Core website and Drupal Commerce-based ecommerce platform

Mobiscroll touch friendly scheduling, planning and resource management framework

Mobiscroll Integration

Running on Pantheon’s Fully Managed Web Hosting Platform

Learn more about Pantheon

The Future

Now fully live and in use across all AWP’s locations, feedback from guests and the internal team has been extremely positive. The new system handles complex bookings seamlessly, giving guests the online experience they need and the AWP team the data to run a completely smooth operation.

Because of the operational savings and potential for scalability, AWP now plans to roll the system out to more of their operation. In the coming months the new booking system will handle car parking permits, retail sales and aqua park bookings. The potential to grow further in the future is also built into the current system.

We continue to support AWP in their usage of the system on an ongoing basis. We’re here to help if something goes wrong or ready to help with a bit of guidance for new users.

This platform is not just for online bookings; it is a platform which now manages all facility bookings across all sites. AWP trusts Adaptive to build, host and support this mission critical platform.

Learn more about our ongoing relationship with AWP here.

What The Client Says

We find Adaptive to be extremely capable and responsive. We rely on them heavily to support and develop a key application for our organisation and have no hesitation in recommending them.

William Kirstein

General Manager, AWP