Almost one hundred holiday park operators heard from industry, technology, and sustainability specialists at leading software solutions provider, Elite Dynamics’ bi-annual Customer Day in Manchester.
Elite Dynamics, which provides comprehensive IT business solutions to the holiday home and parks’ industry, welcomed a record number of customers to the event – sponsored by Hoseasons – at the Radisson Blu Manchester Airport Hotel. Industry attendees first heard from Elite Dynamics MD, Jamaine Campbell about how the company has been on a strong growth trajectory and has no sign of slowing down anytime soon. The technology company, which was co-founded by Jamaine in 2015 has just had its most successful year to date with revenue up over £1m on the previous 12 months. An ambitious strategy going into 2022 and beyond will see the technology specialists forge new partnerships to take the business global while maintaining their focus on sustained growth in the UK holiday park market.
Jamaine excited the audience with a first-look at some of the upcoming new product developments to further enhance the functionality. One new enhancement is using the Microsoft Power Platform and Power Apps to seamlessly plug into the park management system to streamline jobs on park – anything from meter readings, safety tests, and housekeeping tasks to integrating with manufacturers and other external providers to action tasks.
Will McIntee, Region Lead North America & UK at Companial, which is Elite Dynamics’ direct link with Microsoft, updated attendees with the global giant’s current focus and some words of advice to the holiday park industry: “In an age of digital disruption, there’s a need to have platforms in place that adapt and change in a realistic, timely, agile manner. Demand for e-commerce systems and platforms quadrupled in a six-month period over Covid as customers wanted platforms that could change rapidly in a rapid changing world. Technology is impacting and disrupting all of our businesses.
The changes within your industry over the last three years have been kind of staggering. You cannot not evolve. You need to plan your evolution and think about your roadmap. “We all need to be thinking about how we leverage the cloud to make our lives better. If you think of the suite of business applications, they serve everything from marketing, HR, sales, operations, e-commerce, finance, service, and they’re all underpinned by the same platform. Power apps are so exciting as you’re able to create apps so much more quickly and effectively than ever and manage and monitor so much better than you ever used to. And they plug seamlessly into EliteParks – your corporate system of record. It’s mind blowing. I’m so excited to see the pace of change in technology and more importantly, it’s impact.” Other speakers on the day included Elite Dynamics’ sustainability partners, Play it Green, who explained how holiday park operators can give their customers the chance to offset their travel to and from their parks at the time of booking, and enhance customer communication with offers on a wide range of sustainable products to really drive the green agenda.
The sustainability discussion continued with Landal GreenParks when UK Operations Manager, Ricky Dent told the audience there had been a “71 per cent rise in searches for sustainable goods over the last five years and 72 per cent of Generation Y&Z travellers want to make more sustainable travel choices.” He was also keen to stress that “technology shouldn’t replace, it should enhance the experience for guests.” He continued: “You cannot beat personal experience and interaction on a park. So if we can alleviate some of the teams’ time through technology, we’re freeing them up to enhance the customer experience.
If you’re on an 8-hour shift and you spend 7 hours behind a computer, you’ve only spent an hour with a guest. But if technology can save five hours, that’s five extra hours you have to enhance a customer’s experience and make sure they have an unforgettable holiday.”
For more information on Elite Dynamics or to arrange a demo of the market leading Microsoft powered software solutions, visit https://www.elitedynamics.co.uk.
