Who I help · Experiences and attractions
Online booking and better visits for small attractions
Farms, sanctuaries, tours, tastings, workshops, and small visitor attractions. Let people book and pay the moment they decide, and give them something worth coming back for.
How can a small attraction or experience take more bookings online?
Let people book and pay in one go, on your own website, at the moment they decide. Show each option clearly, with its times, its price, and what is included; show live availability; confirm instantly; send a reminder; and make it easy to change a date rather than simply not turn up. Taking payment when people book cuts no-shows. Be easy to find on Google, with real photographs and reviews that get a reply. And give people something to add to the visit, such as brunch or refreshments, so each booking is worth more.
Atelier Sawyer builds booking websites and helps run the food and drink side of small attractions and experiences across the UK.
What I see in small attractions
- Bookings by message: enquiries on WhatsApp, Instagram, email, and the phone, and a diary held together by hope.
- Chasing payment: bank transfers that do not arrive, and visitors who do not turn up.
- Capacity guesswork: too many people on one tour, nobody on the next.
- A café or shop that loses money: run as a favour to visitors, rather than as part of the business.
- Volunteers and staff: rotas on paper, and nobody sure who is in on Saturday.
- Hard to find: visitors who would love it, but have never heard of it.
How I help attractions and experiences
| If you… | Start with |
|---|---|
| Need people to book and pay online | Websites, from £3,250, with booking and payment quoted |
| Need visitors to find you | Promote, £745 a month |
| Run a café, shop, or bar that should earn more | A Hospitality Health Check, £495, or Run, £795 a month |
| Are opening an attraction café or adding food and drink | Plan, £495 a month, or a Pre-Opening Diagnostic, £695 |
| Need your till, bookings, and stock to work together | Digitise, from £2,950 |
| Are a charity or social enterprise | See how I work with charities |
Donkey Dreamland
Donkey Dreamland is a donkey sanctuary on the Costa del Sol. Between ventures, I wanted to volunteer there. What they needed was not another pair of hands, but order.
Visits were booked with no payment taken. Bookings and donations lived on scraps of paper, and card payments could not be matched to anything, so nobody knew whether a payment was a visit, a donation, or something from the shop. There was no way to organise the volunteers: a dozen on site one day, two the next. Even the donkeys' care plans were on a whiteboard in the shed, one calima, the dusty wind that blows in from the Sahara, away from being wiped clean.
So I gave them my time another way, and built them a system:
- A website in four languages that tells the sanctuary's story and introduces each donkey
- Visits sold as experiences, "Tour with Brunch" and "Tour with Refreshments", booked and paid for online, with automatic confirmations and invoices, and a calendar for the days the sanctuary is closed
- Online donations
- A visitor chatbot that answers questions in several languages, checked against the sanctuary's own information and authoritative sources on donkey care
- A portal for the team: who is visiting and who is volunteering today, a weekly rota with roles and shifts, tasks and training, enquiries, a contact list that records marketing consent, the donkeys' care records, and the finances, from shop and donation receipts to income, expenses, and reports
The first two paid bookings came in soon after launch.
The lesson is the one I would bring to any attraction: make booking effortless, and put food and drink into the visit itself. A tour with brunch is a better morning for the visitor, and a better booking for the sanctuary.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a booking system, or can I keep taking bookings by phone and email?
Once you take more bookings than you can answer the same day, yes. Phone and email work until the first double booking, the first unpaid no-show, or the first weekend spent on WhatsApp instead of with visitors. A booking system shows live availability, takes payment, confirms instantly, and sends reminders while you sleep. Start simple; a custom build only makes sense when an off-the-shelf tool does not fit.
How do I reduce no-shows for tours and experiences?
Take payment, or a deposit, when people book; send a reminder the day before; and make it easy to change the date online. People who can move a booking in two clicks rarely just fail to turn up. For group bookings, take a deposit per head and confirm numbers a few days before, so a short group does not leave you with empty places.
Can you build a system for volunteers or staff?
Yes. For Donkey Dreamland, I built a portal with a weekly rota, shifts and roles, tasks and training, and a view of who is on site today, alongside bookings, enquiries, donations, and the accounts. Every one is different, so it is quoted per project, and it starts with how your team actually works, not with the software.
Talk it through
A free 30-minute call will tell us both what you need, and whether I am the right person to build it.