Bookacamp News

Vacation calendar: school holidays and public holidays at a glance 2026/05/02

For operators, venue operators

Anyone planning sessions lives with the school holiday calendar — and with the fact that every German federal state has its own dates. Until now that meant a holiday table in one browser tab, the backoffice in another, and your eyes and brain as the comparison tool. With the new vacation calendar, this overview now lives directly inside Bookacamp and shows four calendar years — the current one plus three years ahead — on a single page.

What you see

The view follows the heatmap pattern: one square per day, seven rows for the days of the week, columns marching week by week through the year. The colour of each cell tells you at a glance what is going on that day.

• Blue tones mark public holidays. The darker the shade, the more federal states are off at the same time.
• Green tones stand for school holidays — again with shades that show how many of the selected federal states are affected.
• Purple appears whenever school holidays and a public holiday fall on the same day — typical for Good Friday, Ascension Day or Whit Monday during a holiday week.

Each year block carries the month abbreviations Jan through Dec on top, so even in the dense grid your eye finds its position right away. Hovering a cell brings up a tooltip with the date, the number of affected federal states and the names of the relevant public holidays or school vacations.

Filters — fitting any planning situation

By default all 16 federal states and both layers — public holidays and school holidays — are active. A click on a federal-state chip toggles it on or off, and the buttons All federal states and No federal states handle bulk operations. To focus on school holidays only, simply switch off the Public holidays layer, and vice versa. The heatmap reacts immediately, with no reload.

Where the calendar lives — and where the data comes from

The page sits in the backoffice under Info-I (Top-Menü) → Vacation calendar and is rendered directly above the familiar calendar event table. That way your own entries and the federal-state context appear together in a single view. The data comes from the open OpenHolidays API; a single import run populates the database and new accounts receive the dataset automatically when they sign up.

Why this matters

The seasonal calendar is the foundation of any serious session planning — early arrival days, bridge days, tight Whitsun weeks and the notorious holiday gaps between federal states all influence occupancy. With the vacation calendar your whole team has the same visualisation in the same system; that saves research time, avoids spreadsheet copy-paste and makes it easier to schedule sessions deliberately against — or deliberately into — a school holiday week.

The feature is available for all accounts immediately and requires no configuration.

Author: Mathias Methner

Article link

Package configurations: build family bookings with a click 2026/04/20

For operators

Offering family packages or bookings with a fixed set of main people plus optional extras used to require a custom developer configuration. That hurdle is gone: with the new Package configurations module you can assemble main categories, person slots and additional-person rules entirely in the backoffice — no code, no deployment wait.

What is a package configuration?

A package configuration is a template that defines how a booking in your booking form may be composed. It consists of a list of categories. Each category describes:

• a main title the customer picks first (e.g. "2 adults up to 4 children")
• a set of person slots — each slot represents one fixed main person and lists the accommodations that person may choose from
• a rule for additional persons — a maximum count plus a set of accommodations that can be booked on top

How to use it

Under Management → Package configurations you create a new configuration, give it an internal title, translate the customer-facing title for every language your site supports, and then click the categories together. Add category opens a new block where you can add as many person slots as you need. For each slot you pick the allowed accommodations via checkboxes. The Additional persons block below sets the maximum extra count and the accommodations available to them.

Once saved, assign the configuration to a session in the session editor's expert area under Package configuration. From there on, the booking form for that session automatically renders the main categories from your configuration and respects the rules for additional persons. All other sessions without an assigned configuration behave unchanged.

Archive instead of delete

Configurations that are not currently in use can be archived and reactivated at any time. That keeps the list tidy without losing history. You can only delete a configuration if no session still references it — otherwise the system lists the linked sessions for you.

Why this matters

Family and group offers are the constructs that most often push booking software to its limits. With this module the backoffice user gets full control over the booking schema — without development effort, without wait time, and with a UI that produces results in minutes instead of hours. That means faster response to new offers and room to experiment with seasonal variants.

Author: Mathias Methner

Article link

Daily Occupancy: manage capacity across parallel sessions at a glance 2026/04/07

For operators, venue operators

Anyone running multiple sessions in parallel at a single location knows the problem: there is no single view showing how occupied an accommodation category is across all active sessions. How many beds in building A are taken today? Which session still has capacity for female participants? Answering these questions typically means opening several screens, maintaining a spreadsheet, or making phone calls. The new Daily Occupancy feature in Bookacamp solves exactly this.

One date, all sessions, everything at once

Under Locations → Daily Occupancy, select a location and a date. The system shows all sessions that are active on that day — meaning every session whose start and end date includes the chosen date. The date is pre-filled automatically with the next upcoming session start date. All session start dates within the next three months are available as quick-select links, so switching between relevant days takes a single click.

Service overview: bookings at category level

The first section shows, for every service type — accommodation, activities, add-ons, inbound and outbound transfers — how many bookings are running on the selected day. For accommodations and transfers, an additional breakdown shows how many bookings fall into each session length in days. This makes it easy to spot peak loads or identify short stays versus long ones at a glance.

Capacity overview: limits, bookings and free spots by gender category

The centrepiece of Daily Occupancy is the capacity overview. For every accommodation category at the location, it shows — per active session — the following:

• The configured booking limit per gender category (male / female / non-binary / unisex)
• The current bookings per category
• The free spots — colour-coded as soon as a limit is reached or exceeded
• The physical total capacity of the accommodation as an overarching reference, including the overall number of free beds across all sessions

It is immediately clear which session is full and which still has openings — and in which gender category.

Shift capacity directly

Is one session at capacity in a given category while another still has room? Limits can be edited directly in the table — no need to navigate to the session management screen. Each row — meaning each session and accommodation combination — has a save button. Changes take effect immediately; free spots and the totals row update in place without a page reload. Every adjustment is also automatically recorded as a note in the session log, including the previous and new values per gender category.

Participant list by accommodation

Below the capacity overview, Daily Occupancy lists all participants for the day grouped by accommodation category — with booking number, session, arrival, departure, room number, requested room partner, gender and age. The entire view can be exported to Excel.

Daily Occupancy is available now for all accounts at no additional cost. Find it in the backoffice under Locations, or via the chart icon in the locations list.

Author: Mathias Methner

Article link

Dynamic Pricing: Intelligent Pricing for Camps and Youth Travel 2026/03/24

For operators

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Setting prices statically and leaving them unchanged until the next season is simple — but it leaves revenue on the table. Sound familiar? The camp date is still months away, bookings are trickling in slowly, and you wonder whether a lower introductory price might drive more sign-ups. Or conversely: the camp is nearly sold out, yet the price is still at the same level as it was three months ago. This is exactly where Dynamic Pricing comes in — and Bookacamp now brings this capability directly into the platform as a BETA feature.

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What is Dynamic Pricing?

Dynamic Pricing is a data-driven pricing strategy in which the price of an offering is adjusted automatically — based on predefined rules and current influencing factors. Instead of manually updating prices, you define under which conditions and by how much the price should rise or fall. The system takes care of the rest.

The goal is not the opaque price volatility familiar from airline tickets, but transparent, explainable, and economically sound pricing decisions — ones that you as the organiser define yourself and can review or adjust at any time.

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How does it work in Bookacamp?

Dynamic Pricing is activated via the Account Settings. Once enabled, rule sets can be created in the Dynamic Pricing → Rules section. A rule defines:

• Condition: When should the rule trigger? Currently supported:
  • Capacity utilisation — e.g. "once 80 % of spots are taken" or "once only 5 spots remain"
  • Days until start — e.g. "once fewer than 14 days remain before the session starts"
• Adjustment: By what percentage should the price be changed? Positive for price increases (last-minute surcharge), negative for discounts (early-bird incentive).

Rules are then assigned to individual sessions in the session settings. A nightly cron job checks all active, future sessions and, when a rule matches, records a new price entry — including a signed price hash that ensures dynamically adjusted prices cannot be tampered with. Organisers optionally receive an email summary of all price changes.

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What potential does Dynamic Pricing hold?

Consistently using Dynamic Pricing can work in multiple directions:

• Revenue optimisation at high demand: When a camp fills up quickly, the price can rise automatically. The last spots remain attractive to many families regardless — and the organiser captures more revenue.
• Improved utilisation when bookings start slowly: Early bookers can be rewarded with a lower price. This incentivises early decisions and gives the organiser planning certainty.
• Last-minute management: A small surcharge close to the camp start date is one option; a remaining-spots discount to fill the last places is another. Both are configurable via rules.
• Fewer manual interventions: No need to monitor occupancy levels by hand or update prices manually — rules run fully automatically in the background.

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Where is Dynamic Pricing heading?

The current release is intentionally marked BETA. The foundation is built and tested — but the architecture was designed for extensibility from the outset. Planned enhancements include:

• Seasonal pricing rules: Automatic adjustments based on booking period or session date — e.g. higher prices during school holidays, lower prices in the shoulder season.
• Day-of-week patterns: Sessions starting on a Monday attract different demand than those starting on a Friday. Such patterns can be factored into future rule conditions.
• Agency-specific price dynamics: Pricing rules that apply only to specific distribution partners or agencies.
• Combinable conditions: Rules built from multiple factors simultaneously — e.g. "when more than 70 % capacity is booked AND fewer than 21 days remain until start".
• Historical analytics: Dashboards showing when each rule triggered, how occupancy evolved over time, and what revenue impact Dynamic Pricing produced.

We welcome feedback from practice. Which rules would be most useful for your offerings? Write to us — your input feeds directly into the roadmap.

Author: Mathias Methner

Link to article

Latest & Greatest Updates 14.10.2025

For all Bookacamp users

✨ Useful information

• Individual dates are shown in the booking form

  For offers with multiple dates, only the first and last date with the end times were previously shown on the booking page. This was not very transparent for customers. Therefore, we have adjusted the booking forms so that all dates with their start and end times are now displayed.

• Updated user interface for agency settings

  When you open the settings for an agency, you will find a section on the right called Expert mode, which contains topic areas that bundle individual settings.

• Exclude agency bookings from automatic payment reminders

  In an agency’s settings under Expert mode > Communication, you will find the toggle “Included in payment automation”. This is enabled by default so that behavior remains unchanged. If you deactivate it, bookings for this agency will be ignored in the automation of payment reminders and cancellations.

• Store cancellation deadlines for accommodation

  The vast majority of accommodations or properties define cancellation deadlines in their occupancy contracts. You can store these deadlines via Administration > Locations for the respective locations.
  Afterwards, a table will appear in the top right of your dashboard showing the cancellation deadlines per session. You will also find an additional column Cancellation in in the session overview.

• Show booked insurance in emails

  If you want to inform customers about the insurance they have booked in an email related to a booking – for example in the booking confirmation – the new placeholder (|booking-insurance|) is available in the booking email templates.

• New email placeholder “With overnight stay”

  The new placeholder (|session-is-overnight|) yes/no or ja/nein can be used in the booking confirmation or booking receipt confirmation to indicate whether an offer includes an overnight stay or not. The distinction is made based on the session type “Without overnight stay (day camp)”.

• Chart with annual revenue

  On your statistics page, in addition to the chart for bookings per month in a year-over-year comparison, you will also find a chart for revenue per month in a year-over-year comparison.

• New placeholders for the “Travel documents” email template

  The following new placeholders are available for the email template booking-travel-documents-de/en:

  • (|booking-total|) for the total invoice amount of the bookings
  • (|booking-deposit|) for the sum of payments already made by the customer
  • (|booking-balance|) for the outstanding payments
  • (|transfer-link-with-text|) for the link to the transfer questionnaire

• Display of net invoice amount in invoice overview

  In the booking module > Overviews > Invoices, you can access the page with an overview of all invoices generated in Bookacamp for your customers. New is the display of the invoice amount separated into net and gross amounts.

• Adjustment of wording for overnight portion

  Presumably, ratification is still pending, VAT on food in the hospitality sector will be reduced to 7% from 2026. However, this adjustment applies exclusively to food, not to beverages. If you would like to show the overnight portion and catering separately in your offers/sessions in Bookacamp, the booking form and invoices will refer to overnight & catering portion.

• Installment payment option for customers

  You have the option to offer your customers payment of the invoice amount in installments. Installment payments are available for the following payment methods:

  • Prepayment (bank transfer)
  • SEPA (direct debit)
  • Adyen
  • Stripe

  You can define various installment payment models. You activate the installment payment option for your account under Settings > Account settings > Integrations > Payment methods > Installment payments. After activation, a new menu item Installment payments appears in the booking module. There, under Administration, you can define the installment payment models and specify which of your offers they should apply to.

• Quick overview of globally active discounts

  If you have activated one or more discounts for all your offers/sessions (globally active discounts), a new notification box Globally active discounts will appear at the top left of your dashboard. Clicking on it opens a page with all of these discounts.

• Your own landing page after successful registration/booking

  When registration/booking is successful, we normally display our success page with the booking summary and other functions or information. If you prioritize your tracking more highly, you can specify a self-hosted success page that usually contains tracking triggers to measure the success of your advertising. In this case, you can store this custom landing page in the booking module > Administration > Camp, in the respective camp settings on the left under Booking success pages/tracking.

😎 Teamer add-on

• Contact details of team members for camp management

  You can define in the team member profiles whether the profile represents a leadership position. A team member with a leadership position will see the contact details of the rest of the team in their own profile login.

• Team members can edit their own notes

  Your team members can subsequently modify the notes they have written via their profile login and in the on-site view.

𖨆𖨆𖨆𖨆 Group Suite

• Create a session from a group booking in the Group Suite

  You can convert a program offer into a “real” session on the group detail page. To do this, open the group detail page and click “Edit group”. A new box titled “Convert program offer to session” with an explanatory text and button will now appear. When you click it, the program offer becomes an individual session for this group, and you can use the usual session functions for individual bookings. This is useful if you want to assign instructors/team members to this group, send certificates to individual participants, or process the entire group via individual bookings. This allows the booking link to be sent to the group. Organize school trips this way and receive participant data directly from the parents.

• Time block for an entire property

  Under Administration > Time block, you can create time blocks for locations so that certain periods can no longer be booked for your program offers at that location. You can block individual accommodation types, individual rooms, or the entire location. If you do not select any accommodation or room in the location block settings, the entire location will be blocked for the defined period after saving. Otherwise, only what is selected will be blocked.

• Free email template or email can be sent from group booking

  In the email templates, you can create and save a free template for groups. On the detail page of the respective group, there is a button Send email in the top right, which allows you to select this template or send a free-text email.

• Customer recognition for group bookings

  Previously, there was no function for recognizing customers who had already booked for a group in the past when registering again for group bookings. Now, the customer database is also recognized for group bookings, and duplicates are avoided.

• Store blocking periods for accommodation types per property

  To do this, click in the Group Suite on Overviews > Occupancy.
  There you select the location and receive a resource planner for all accommodations. When you mark a period in the row with the name of the accommodation category, a window opens to save the blocking period, and you can directly block additional periods because the page does not reload. The menu item Time block remains, as deleting or editing periods continues to be done via the administration table.

• Blocking an entire room

  If you have defined rooms in the Group Suite > Administration > Rooms, you can assign them on the group detail page of that group. Sometimes it is useful or necessary to block an entire room regardless of the number of available beds. For example, if a multi-bed room is occupied by an accompanying person and the other beds should not be used. There is a new function on the group detail page to block an entire room. This uses a new battery icon. In the resource planner, the room is then marked with a small (x).

• Short label for accommodation category

  In the Group Suite resource overview, there was an issue that the titles of accommodation categories were too long and were truncated. In the booking module under Administration > Locations, the accommodation categories can be edited, and there you will find an input field for the internal title, which can be shorter.

Author: Mathias Enderlein

Article Link

Latest & Greatest Updates 2025/07/16

✨ Good to Know

• Assign whether additional services and activities are only available for groups

  With a large number of additional services and activities, it can be difficult to keep track of whether they should be available only for individual bookings, only for group offers, or for both. Now, when creating them, you can define for which module the services apply:

  • All (available in all add-ons)
  • Booking System
  • Group Suite

• Overview of emails in the queue

  When sending a large number of emails from Bookacamp, they are sent in batches with a delay. It was often difficult to see which emails had already been sent and which were still in the queue. If emails are in the queue, a notice will appear on the dashboard. Clicking the tile opens a list.

• Archive custom email templates

  Over time, many custom email templates can accumulate, making it hard to find the right one. You can now archive your own email templates using the orange button.

• Copy canceled sessions as sessions runs when switching seasons

  Previously, when using the season switch feature, the canceled status was copied over. We’ve corrected this so that such offers are now available as normal.

• New placeholder for certificates

  A new placeholder ${booking-code} is now available for booking numbers in the certificate templates stored in the runs.

• Display of bank details on invoices is optional

  In the account settings at the top left under Account > Invoices, you will find the button Hide bank details. This hides the bank information on the invoice PDF, which can be helpful if your clients are only meant to pay via a payment provider (e.g., Stripe).

• Credit note numbers fit into the invoice number sequence

  Previously, when canceling an invoice, the PDF was modified to show the original amount as negative and included a "cancelled" watermark. Also, the invoice number was changed by adding /c. From now on, the original invoice PDF remains unchanged (except for the watermark), and the number stays the same. Instead, a separate credit note is created that fits into the invoice number sequence and includes a /c suffix for easier identification.

• Cancellation deadlines per object according to occupancy contracts

  Accommodations often allow free cancellation of contracted occupancy slots within a specific timeframe before the start.
  In Bookacamp, you can now enter this deadline in days before the offer start for each location under Cancellation deadline (optional). If the deadline differs from the standard occupancy contract, an alternative deadline can be entered directly in the session in expert mode under deadlines.
  A list on the right of the dashboard shows how many days remain until the deadline.

• New question types for open questions

  Two new types are available for open questions:

  • Decision (Yes + Explanation / No): If answered with Yes, a free text field for explanation appears.
  • Decision (Yes / No + Explanation): If answered with No, a free text field for explanation appears.

• Automatically send occupancy reports (host list) to locations on two different dates

  Many locations request information on occupancy ahead of time, such as group size, dietary requirements, or number of teamers. Often, they also want a final report shortly before the start.
  In the account settings under Automation > Booking system, you can activate the automatic sending of two emails under Email host summary, based on the offer’s start date. The first report uses the template system-location-info, and for the final one, there’s a new template system-location-info-final. Both templates can be customized.

• Booking indicator if a complaint exists

  No matter how much effort is made, customer complaints can occur. To quickly filter bookings with complaints, the booking label complaint is now available. For such bookings, an orange-bordered notice with the heading Complaint appears in the booking details. To mark a booking, open the booking details and add the label.

• Transfer questionnaire can be sent automatically

  Just like the participant questionnaire, it's now possible to automatically send an email with the transfer questionnaire link x days before the start. This can be configured in the account settings under Automation > Booking System > Email Transfer Questionnaire.

• Edit received transfer questionnaires

  It's now possible to edit the transfer questionnaire in the back office.
  At the bottom of the booking detail page, in the section Transfer Questionnaire, you’ll find the new button Edit Questionnaire.

🛒 Shop

• Display shop sales in the daily briefing email

  Want to include information about shop sales in your daily briefing email? Go to Settings > Email Templates and find the template system-briefing-daily-?, then add the following new placeholders:

  • (|summary-shop-purchase-count|) for number of purchases
  • (|summary-shop-purchase-revenue|) for total revenue of the new sales

• Multiple shop pages for different products

  If you offer different types of products and want to display them on separate shop pages on your website, this is now possible. Assign the same label to all products you want on the same page, and then append the label to the shop page URL (without spaces). Voilà!

• Different billing address for shop purchases

  Your shop customers can now specify a different billing address next to the delivery address. By default, the checkbox indicates that the billing address is the Same as delivery address. If the box is unchecked, input fields for a different billing address, including a company field, appear.

😎 Teamer Addon

• New selection for seasonal status of teamers

  For teamers who are temporarily unavailable for assignment, there’s now an additional seasonal status: paused.

• Links to the teamer detail page

  In the teamer module under team overview and assignments, and on the assignment planning page for each run/event, you can click the teamer’s name to go to their detail page.

• Teamer assignment: filter runs to be planned by calendar week

  On the teamer planning page, the runs listed can now be filtered by calendar week using a dropdown filter at the top of the page.

𖨆𖨆𖨆𖨆 Group Suite

• Create offer letters for group reservations

  A group has requested one of your offers through a reservation and you want to send an offer letter. In the Group Suite under Overviews, then Groups, open the group detail view of the relevant group. At the top right, you will find two buttons: one to create an offer confirmation and one to create a booking confirmation. Both documents contain a table with the requested or confirmed places and all other services.

Author: Mathias Methner

Article Link

Latest & Greatest Updates Summer Edition 2024/10/15

✨ Useful information

• Cancel offer with your own email template

  If you need to cancel a session, for example due to low participation numbers, there is the email template (|booking-session-cancellation|). This template can therefore have different content than the previous email about cancelling a booking.

• Gender-based waiting list

  Previously, booking a waiting list was only possible if all places in an offer had already been booked. The system now reacts more sensitively and you can put yourself on the waiting list even if a regular place can still be booked for a different gender.

• Automated Whatsapp communication with Chatlyn

  Chatlyn is a marketing automation tool. Transferring contacts to Chatlyn was step one. For some time now it has also been possible for Bookacamp to send a trigger to Chatlyn so that automated WhatsApp communication processes start from Chatlyn. This happens after the booking is confirmed and when customers are checked in, for example to inform the parents that the child is safe on site.

• Bulk mailing to group registrants

  Using the session, it is possible to send a bulk email only to group registrants. In contrast to normal collective email sending, group email templates are supported.

• Nationality in demographic overview

  The nationalities are now also listed in the demographic overview that is available for each session.

• Display of the camp management on the booking details page

  If a position is defined as a management position in the Teamer add-on, the system determines and displays the camp management when the booking is opened. This is useful during and after the season if parents contact you and you want to see the contact person on site directly.

😎 Counselor-Addon

• Cusgtom questions in master export

  The master export is an Excel list with a lot of data from the database that can be exported for further processing, analysis or data backup. For a few weeks now, this has also included the questions and answers to the free questions that can be asked when applying or in the questionnaire.

• Traffic light system in operational planning

  We have always had a color nomenclature when planning the assignment of your staff. We adapted these, used more contrasting colors and added a legend.

• Link profile login to confirmation

  In the account settings, you can activate the invitation to create a profile login automatically when you confirm your assignment. Beforehand, it is checked whether the login already exists.

• Predefined roles in profile login

  The login for staff now has quite a few different access rights. Please contact our support if you would like us to combine the rights into roles so that you only have to press one button to assign all the rights to the role.

• Received email for note from counselor staff

  If a note for a booking is stored in your profile login, you can activate an email notification in your personal settings.

• Bulk actions for the change of season

  If you are currently switching to the new application phase for 2025, the following will be of interest to you: In the season change feature, you can now run actions for many supervisor profiles at once. This includes deleting and archiving the profiles, but also resetting them to the profile status confirmed.

𖨆𖨆𖨆𖨆 Group Suite

• Services per group

  With group offers, it may be that an offer is not made per person, but only for the entire group, for example because booking a bus has a total price. When entering the transfers, additional services and activities, you can choose whether it is a price per person or the total price for the group. This feature is quite new and is therefore activated upon request.

• Block periods of entire room categories

  Previously, you could already block individual rooms for a certain period of time. We have expanded this function so that entire room categories can now be blocked. This is useful, for example, in winter, where accommodation in tents can be rather inconvenient. This way you don't have to click on all the individual rooms.

• ReservationOn request

  If the system determines that there is not enough space for a period and group size, it will normally display the session as unbookable. If you still want to have the contact, you can activate in the account settings that the periods can be booked on request.

• Limitation of the day of the week

  When entering each program offer, you can decide whether the start of the offer is only possible for a specific day of the week. You can make school trips always start on Mondays, for example.

• Invoice itemstype and suggest

  Group invoices can be saved as draft invoices. This means you can make changes and remove and add services while the offer is running without creating a new invoice and canceling the old one. When adding, the system suggests existing packages, which you can then select directly. This will insert the price immediately.

• Placeholders for payment information

  The group email templates have been expanded to include new placeholders to exchange information about invoice amounts, down payment amounts, and remaining payment amounts.

• Validity periods for program offers

  When entering program offers that can be booked directly, the calendar can be restricted so that, for example, winter offers do not appear in summer.

• Automated creation of offer documents

  For a reservation or booking confirmation, the system is now able to create letter-like documents for printing or sending by email. The texts of the templates can be stored and edited in the account settings.

🏢 Insurance

• Valid insurance in case of booking cancellation

  If the organizer cancels an offer and the booking has active insurance, the insurance would still appear on the cancellation invoice. Because the cancellation comes from the organizer, we have made it possible to remove the insurance so that the booking can be canceled for zero euros.

Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

Latest & Greatest Updates December Edition 2023/12/15

✨ Useful information

• QR codes on print media

  The QR codes with the booking link can be generated for each event. These are displayed in the backoffice and can then be saved as an image. To do this, open the integration guide for the events (the thing with the globe at the top of the menu) and find the links for the QR codes for each individual event. QR codes are found more and more in print media and flyers and are ideal for quick navigation to websites.

• Link to the questionnaire in the booking confirmation

  When people book, they usually receive a confirmation of booking receipt, which is intended to show that someone is taking care of the booking and that you don't have to call and ask. The email templates for both individual and group registrations can now contain the links to the participant questionnaires.

• Invoice text with new placeholder

  From our experience, it is good if there are very specific deadlines with dates and amounts on the invoice. We received a message that the placeholder (|final-sum|) for the invoice amount minus the down payment amount was missing and inserted it.

• Archive file uploads

  The list of files can get quite long, especially if you use different certificates of participation for different events. What is no longer needed can be archived in the file management. Then it will no longer be displayed when you send an email.

• Online payment for group bills

  We have taught our integrations for all payment service providers (Stripe, Adyen, Girocheckout, Saferpay, Sofort.) how to handle the payment of group bills. This means that the payment panel appears either on the payment page, which can be linked in our emails, or, in the case of automatic booking confirmation, directly on the booking confirmation page.

🛒 Shop

• Merchandise

  From the beginning, the shop was designed so that it could offer both vouchers and advertising materials. We have now also activated the shop for merchandise. This is interesting if you want to offer clothes with your logo.

• Test purchase

  Setting up the shop always involves a few test purchases until the content of the emails and the look of the voucher images are perfect. Anyone who has tried it should mark the purchase as a test purchase and then cancel the purchase. Then no one complains later because there is an invoice lying around that was never paid.

• Archive

  When purchases are completed and the list becomes too long, a purchase can be archived.

• Legal

  We have introduced various options in the account settings for the shop to cover legal issues. This includes a text field whose contents are displayed before purchase. Here it is a good idea to inform that vouchers are not paid out in cash or are only valid for certain offers. In addition, you can define links to terms and conditions, revocation and data protection that differ from the other offers.

• Communication

  Depending on your own preferences, you can switch the order confirmation and the email for sending vouchers on or off for the shop. Deactivating the first email makes sense if you only offer online payment, as the second email will be sent immediately upon receipt of payment.

😎 Counselor-Addon

• Handbook for counselors

  Many already use the profile login for carers. In order to further expand this tool as a knowledge base, you can store a link to a manual in the backoffice under Administration > Camps. This link will then be displayed in the profile login. For example, you can record information about the special features of the location.

🧾 Accounting

• Cost center per category

  This is for all accounting lovers who can hardly contain their affection for a DATEV booking stack. All of our services can already be accounted for, meaning they can be provided with an SKR (standard chart of accounts). You have to activate this centrally in the account settings. If it is activated, the (accommodation) categories of events and camps can now be assigned a cost center. This information will later be inserted into the DATEV export and is therefore available for further processing in the accounting program.

Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

Sell Christmas vouchers via our shop system 2023/09/24

Today we're looking at our new shop system, which you can use to sell vouchers for Christmas. With our latest releases we have connected all of our online payment providers (Stripe, Adyen, Girocheckout, Klarna Sofort.) and of course the SEPA payments that are popular in Germany. This allows the customer to pay for and use the voucher ordered immediately. When paying via online payment providers, the vouchers are activated immediately and automatically.

✨ This is how you use the shop system

1. Activation

Open your account settings and navigate to the Shop box. When activating, you confirm the conditions and are immediately ready to enter your desired vouchers in different amounts. A new left main menu item appears with the heading Shop.

2. Add products

You can enter your vouchers in the corresponding sub-main menu item Products. At this point you choose the amount of the purchase price. The purchase price and the voucher value can differ from each other, so you can offer your customers an incentive to buy. You can use our image templates to offer vouchers that match the theme - for example for Christmas.

3. Integrate shop

You can either send the shop as a link or add it to the menu of your website, or you can embed the shop as a post in an iframe on your website. The layout of the shop adapts to the booking forms on your website. You can find more information and the link below your product overview. There is also a help page linked there.

4. Payment

If you do not use online payment through one of our providers, you can offer payment with SEPA transfer or our SEPA direct debit. With both payment methods, you have to activate the purchased vouchers yourself after receiving the money. It is much more convenient with an online payment. We will be informed of the payment directly, so that Bookacamp automatically activates the vouchers and sends the associated confirmation to the customer by email. So you don't have to worry about anything else.

Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

EYCA - The European Youth Card 2023/07/21

The European Youth Card (EYCA – European Youth Card), issued in Germany under license by Reisenetz e.V. (German Association for Youth Travel) by EYCard Deutschland GmbH, is an advantage card valid throughout Europe for young people (up to the age of 30) and grants more than 30,000 different advantages when traveling in Europe. From discounts in hostels, airlines, ferries, hotels, museums, amusement parks etc. to restaurants. This includes (for guests living in Germany) travel health insurance from ERGO – for one year, for any number of trips, worldwide (including the USA / Canada!).

The card is available online for €19 at www.jugendkarte.de. Some organizers at Bookacamp provide their travel guests with the youth card free of charge after the end of a camp as a great, valuable extra. This is very easy to do by sending a voucher code to the participants or parents after the end of the camp.

Instead of €19, organizers who use Bookacamp only pay €12 - and of course only for redeemed card codes. For Reisenetz members, the costs are even reduced to just €9 per youth card voucher code redeemed! It still includes the annual travel insurance (foreign travel health insurance) for any number of trips. If you are interested, Ralf Olk / EYCard Deutschland GmbH will be happy to help olk@jugendkarte.de.

Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

New features and updates 2023/05/12

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🤩 The Highlights

• Daily briefings by email

  You're sitting in the subway to work and you can already look at yesterday's booking figures via email - Bookacamp now makes this possible. In the account settings under Automation - Briefings you can activate our daily, weekly or monthly emails and also attach the sales report as an Excel file. This makes especially sense for the monthly briefing. The e-mails provide information about the status of the activated period, whereby the content of the e-mails can be customized. The emails contain statistics about bookings, cancellations, sales, insurance, registration of supervisors or feedback received.

• Automatic dispatch of the DATEV export to the tax office

  Our automation can conveniently email the DATEV export weekly or monthly. By entering the recipient group, it is even possible to send the file directly to the tax office. The e-mail template can be individually adapted, for example to send the client number directly to the office. Activation is done in the Automation - Accounting section of

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✨ Useful information

• New statistics for agency bookings per day

  We offer a number of evaluations, both statistically and financially. Our evaluation got a new statistic to see the bookings per day per agency. This can be helpful to identify certain days for sending a newsletter.

• Adaptive search field

  At the top of our menu is one of the main tools to quickly navigate to an entity in the tool. What's new is that the search field now reacts to where you are. In the supervisor addon, it changes to the search for supervisors, if you have the discounts open, you can search for the discount code. What is currently active can be recognized by the small icon in front of the field.

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😎 Teamer-Addon

• Edit questionnaire for counselors

  In the profile login for supervisors there is the possibility to update or fill in your own questions if they are not already available. To do this, the profile user must be given the role of access to the questionnaire when setting up the login and the data can then be maintained in the self-service.

• Cancellation policy for teamers

  If fee-based training courses are offered, it may be necessary to provide information about the cancellation when registering. There is now an input field in the settings of the supervisor addon where the link to the cancellation policy can be stored.

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⭐ Feedback-Addon

• Export feedback

  If the feedback addon is active, you can look at the incoming data for evaluation, whereby the free text fields for what-was-good-what-was-not-so-good can be very interesting. With a date filter you can limit the evaluation and you will now also find a function there to export the displayed entries as Excel. In general, the feedback addon is a good tool for improving your own quality standards and the evaluation can be integrated directly into your own website with a banner.

Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

New features and updates 2023/02/21

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🤩 The Highlights

• Public beta for the voucher store

  Every now and then we were asked whether Bookacamp can also sell vouchers. Especially before Christmas or Easter, this is certainly interesting for grandma and grandpa as a gift for the grandchildren. We have always refused to misuse bookable tours and camps for this purpose, because the wording and the functionalities are simply not designed for this. Reason enough to launch a voucher store that integrates seamlessly with the voucher and billing system, so that the vouchers you purchase can be used immediately to book your offers. The voucher store is now going into public beta and can be activated in your own account settings. Of course, the store is especially interesting when using our online payment providers, because the vouchers are then directly paid and active.

  The amount of the vouchers is freely selectable. The vouchers created are designed for printing at home designed and layout with nice background images.

  

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✨ Things to know

• Updates for the Teamer Addon

  Right now is the time of the season, when interviews in preparation for the training courses this year take place. At each interview, notes can be left on the suitability of the person. In order to be well prepared for the interview and also to have everything at hand during the interview, our interviewer page has been updated and now shows more data from the persons profile.

  Replace file uploads

  Files can be uploaded for email attachments or as a library for camp counselors. A file upload can now be updated, for example because this year's packing list has changed. This saves a lot of time instead of updating the email templates one by one.

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🔐 Security

• MFA - Multi Factor Authentication

  After an internal test phase, we are starting to roll out the extended security check MFA for all logins. In addition to the user name and password, a further short-time factor is used. This factor is generated via an app on the smartphone, so a hacker needs the smartphone in addition to the access data, making it much more difficult to gain unauthorized access to an account. The use of MFA will initially be voluntary and will be supported by an information campaign about data protection and security.

Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

Features and Updates 2022/11/08

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The Youth Travel Congress 2022 from Reisenetz will take place in the newly opened BLSV Sportcamp Nordbayern. Starting at 3:50 p.m., we'd love if you tell us if you've ever printed out emails? In this workshop we want to find out, what is already going well with digital transformation and where we still need to find solutions. Mathias Ralf Enderlein and Mathias Methner will guide you through the workshop and are looking forward to many colorful stickys on the whiteboard. Tickets for the congress are available on the website.

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🤩 The highlight

• Early Bird & Last Minute

  The season starts now and it's time to boost business. Vouchers are often used for this purpose. Very up to date Bookacamp has launched coupons that are directly applied, create strike prices and thus draw the attention of customers to the new camps. The coupons can be easily activated for all offers or for selected ones in the coupon configuration and are immediately live. To make sure you don't forget to deactivate a voucher, there is a hint on the dashboard.

  

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✨ Things to know

• Data archived to early?

  At the end of the season you do the seasonal accounting, calculate the commission with the partners and when everything is done, the data is archived to make room for the new season. It feels good every year to start fresh and watch the booking numbers come in. But what if you archived too early and now you need data again after all? Individual bookings can be reactivated a long time ago, and now you can do the same for sessions and events. To do this, you simply click on the session to edit it and you will find the new function at the top of the page. The corresponding bookings will be reactivated directly.

• Forgot travel insurance?

  Bookacamp offers travel insurance directly in the booking process through its partner HanseMerkur. HanseMerkur offers a special additional product for the Corona travel insurance, which makes this offer very interesting for parents. Some parents forget to click on the travel insurance or want to book first and check later if an existing insurance is there. In Bookacamp it is now possible to send a link where the travel insurance can be conveniently added afterwards. Are you interested in the integration to HanseMerkur? We are happy to help you..

• Print Name Tags

  At events and seminars, participants are often given name tags. It is not much fun to fill in the templates for this in Word and then print and cut them out in the right sizes. Based on special sticky labels, Bookacamp exports the names and company names of the participants for you in a predefined format, which can then be printed on the sticky sheets. You can find the explanation for this in your account in the account settings under Integration > Name tags.

  

• Improvements to the invoice overview

  You can download all invoices as PDF. This is useful for example for the tax advisor or simply to close the season. Under Overviews > Invoices you can now find date filters as well as the possibility to search only paid or only unpaid invoices. In addition, the name of the participant appears in the overview, in case you are looking for something quickly.

• Commission matching with agencies and intermediaries

  Data and bookings can be exchanged with other players via our interfaces. Bookacamp processes the booking numbers of third party agents starting this season to simplify list matching for the future.

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Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

Features and Updates 2022/06/09

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There has been some interesting features accumulated since the last feature update. The season is almost over and now it is time for a little vacation, catch your breath and find strength for the start of the fall vacation. Surely there is also a quiet minute to get up to date with the following updates.

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🤩 The highlight

• Instant checkout

  Bookacamp can confirm bookings automatically. This is very convenient especially at the beginning of the season - mostly from November to March - because you as the organizer can lean back and the work is done by the software. If you also offer your customers online payment via one of the numerous online payment providers, the customer is now shown the invoice directly after booking and payment can start. This works just like in any online store. The payment method is selected, the payment is confirmed, and the money is in the account in no time at all.

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✨ Need to know

• Filter by bookable offers

  In the back office in the filter panel for the sessions and events there is a new option to search for bookable offers. Especially at the end of the season, this is helpful in advising customers to quickly find the offers where spots are available.

• Cancel camps and events

  There is an option in the session management via the more function to classify a session as cancelled. When canceling a done, all related bookings are automatically canceled in one step. This takes work off your hands, as the cancellation emails and invoice cancellations are taken care of directly.

• Suspend feedback

  From now on it is possible to ignore single sessions in the dispatch of the automatic feedback request. This can be useful in relation to agencies or companies that use their own feedback systems. The new setting can be found in the expert mode in the communication section.

• Trip interruption & cancellations

  The date and background of cancellations and trip interruptions can now be changed. Under Edit booking directly on the respective booking detail page there is the new input field. In addition, bookings with the status cancelled or interrupted will not be considered in the automatic feedback requests.
  Why is this needed?
  To improve the billing with the hostel and to exclude, that automatic emails are still sent. Season follow-up also benefits from the data.

• To improve the capacity query for sibling bookings.

  It is possible to register more than one participant per booking. Our algorithms, which calculate the number of free spots, have been adjusted and now check directly when adding more participants, what the occupancy level is. If the camp is full, the booking is prevented.

• Self-service waiting list cancellation

  Often certain offers are realized via waiting lists, for example because places are allocated via scholarships or companies want to release the registration lists first. Especially when such registrations cost nothing at first, there is quite a high rate of no shows, which means the kids simply don't show up at camp without cancelling. This is annoying, as others would have liked to come along. It makes sense to ask before the camp, if the registration is still up to date. This can be done by using the e-mail bulk function in the system and, brand new, there are also placeholders that customers can use to cancel or deregister their registration themselves. The cancellation pops up in the internal messaging system and the place can be filled with other participants.

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💰 Everything that has to do with money

• Customer's tax number on the invoice

  It sometimes happens that companies want to see their own tax number on the invoice. To do this, the tax number must be entered in the customer record in the backoffice and it will be inserted under the address field on the invoice.

• Customers with direct debit without payment reminders

  The system is able to send an automatic reminder in case of open payments. The activation is done in the own account settings. For bookings that pay by direct debit, this reminder was previously also sent. To avoid misunderstandings, this is now prevented.

• Incoming payments on the cash desk

  If you have ever done accounting yourself, you will know what to do with the cash accounts Bank (1200) and Cash (1000). This is used to separate cash flows for accounting purposes. When parents pay an amount in cash in the location, it is often posted to a cash register with a paper receipt and its own accounting rules. The amount still needs to be recorded in the booking details, otherwise payment reminders or dunning letters could be sent. If one enters the payment, the choice between both accounts is now available. The 1200 bank account is always preselected. Postings to the cash account are ignored in the further accounting, for example via our DATEV interface.

• Improved dunning

  Payment reminder - reminder1 - reminder2 - collection. But in which status is the posting actually at the moment? The dunning system has been internally decoupled from the booking status, so you can see when an invoice is dunned and it allows reminders on cancellation invoices. This is of course accompanied by better filters and better control. Let's hope that these functions are used as rarely as possible.

😎 Teamer-Addon

• Do you already know the profile login?

  The profile login allows your camp counselors to update their own data, maintain questionnaires and documents, and register requests for the next assignments. A new feature is that the team members can download the participation lists of their camps themselves. This means that the data is always up to date. As a bonus, Bookacamp ensures that counselors must confirm privacy requirements and it logs when which lists were saved. Last but not least, there's less paper, which is good for the environment and your wallet.

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Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

38 years of children and youth travel experience 2022/07/27

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There is an excellent and exciting news at Bookacamp - since Monday Mathias Ralf Enderlein is part of the Bookacamp team. Matze E worked for many years full-time at a large children and youth tour operator, which has been using Bookacamp for a long time and has significantly contributed to the development of some features. This is great, because Matze E can immediately fall back on several years of user knowledge. He also gained his knowledge and experience in the industry during 18 years of working as a camp counselor with children and teenagers.

Bookacamp is very happy to have Matze E in the team.

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Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

Features updates 2022/03/09

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The hot phase of the Easter camps has begun and Bookacamp accompanies this with many individual adjustments in processes and exports. In addition, Bookacamp supports a special holiday campaign in Austria with the ticketing of 45 camps in Tyrol, Salzburg, Carinthia and Italy.

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More automation

Many processes involved in communicating with the customers can be automated. This includes payment reminders, feedback invitations and the latest travel information. Recently, the participant questionnaire can also been sent out automatically by the system.

Performance

As Bookacamp grows, so do the requirements for large accounts (5-10k bookings per year) and the infrastructure behind them. Bookacamp has put an in-memory storage into operation in the last few weeks in order to quickly deliver important data about capacities and bookings, even if thousands of bookings are managed in one account.

Counselor Addon

Since more and more organizers are now using the integrated counselor addon, there are many smaller improvements to the processes. Notes for an assignment to the camp can be written directly with the assignment. It is also possible to create personalized contracts as an e-mail attachment. A Whatsapp chat can be started directly from the back office with the counselor. Of particular note is a new team feature, which lists information about team composition and roles in the team for all of the season's camps. The new feature also offers the possibility of establishing contact between the team for preparation purposes at the touch of a button.

Aesome Layouts

At the request of new tour operators who have been using Bookacamp since 2022, new views for integration on their own website were presented. All views react to the screen size of the end device and are therefore responsive. In addition, Bookacamp now offers integration via country domains bookacamp.at, bookacamp.be, bookacamp.fr, bookacamp.es, bookacamp.it, bookacamp.ch und bookacamp.org und bookacamp.net

Card-Layout

In particular, if all content, texts and product images are managed via Bookacamp, this view is ideal for displaying the entire website of the tour operator from Bookacamp.

Card-Layout grouped

If you don't have enough individual product images or want to summarize the dates for a camp, you can use the more compact view because it's grouped and therefore smaller.

Camps per month

Tables sorted by date or by camp have always existed, because their filter options make them versatile on the website. This view, grouped by month and date, completes the offer.

Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

Create contracts for counselors & Updates until december 2021/02/12

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Part of the application and recruiting process for the placement of camp counselors and travel coordinators is the assignment to a camp (operational planning) and the issuing of contracts. Bookacamp offers various tools, that depend on the skills of the counselor and the capacities of the camp, which make the planning process easier. Issuing the contracts extends the range of functions, so that individual contracts are created by the system and can be sent directly to the counselor as email attachment.

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Various

• Revision of the voucher system
  We have just got the time of year when vouchers as a Christmas present or an early bird discount for the new camps for the coming season are attractive for parents and grandparents. Many travel providers lure their customers with further discounts, for siblings and returnees. This creates the challenge of ensuring, that several siblings are registerd, or not. Bookacamp now offers freely configurable input fields for names or customer numbers that make it easier to find siblings and previous bookings.
• Corona / measles vaccination
  No hygiene concept can avoid checking the vaccination or test backlog for Corona. To make it easier for tour operators to better prepare for the local conditions, the question about the last corona vaccination is now an integral part of the health questionnaire and can be activated with one click in the account settings. In addition to Corona, there are child relevant questions for the year of vaccination for measles, tetanus and ticks (TBE).

Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

Bookacamp for Wordpress 2021/08/25

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Many travel companies use the Wordpress software to maintain the content of the website without having to learn a lot of technical know-how. Since Wordpress can be expanded by many functions through plugins, Bookacamp is now offering its own plugin directly in the Wordpress plugin directory. The aim is to make the integration of the booking forms and the overviews of bookable trips as simple as possible and to completely hide the technical background.

The plug-in is installed directly from the plug-in directory and, after activation, shows a menu item to make all settings. Then a Bookacamp element is inserted directly in the editor of the page. The element lists the possible layouts and also offers two combinable filters for the search results. For example, you can only display all trips in which you can surf. Immediately after the selection, the preview is displayed and the integration is completed by clicking on Save and Publish.

Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

Bankexport for credit transfer for overpayment 2021/08/09

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The summer season is drawing to a close. Typically this is the time to get ready for the end of the season to provide an overview of the bookings for which payments are still unpaid or which bookings need a repayment. Refunds occur when a tour operator reduced the travel price, the customer has accidentally paid too much or a trip that has already been paid for has been canceled.

Finding all bookings with overpayment has been very easy in Bookacamp for years, as there is a separate menu item for this. With today's release, the entire repayment process has been further simplified so that overpaid bookings can be transferred to the bank with a SEPA export. A collective file is created that contains all repayment instructions for open bookings. Commercial banks can read this file and use it to make a repayment. This feature ends the manual copying of bank data in bank transfer forms.

Customers who have not yet stored any bank details are asked by email with just one click to store their bank details in the system. The bank details are field-encrypted and stored in Bookacamp. This new feature is enabled for all Bookacamp users and can be activated in your own settings.

Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

Updates until July 2021/07/09

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The summer vacation has started and some of the participants are already back from the camp - sure with a lots of experiences after this long corona break. To find out more about the real life usage of the various functionalities of Bookacamp, we recently visited a camp on site and reviewed the checkin with a QR code scanner. Some of the adaptations below are a direct response to what we learned there.

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Demographics

Parents often get in touch to find out about the age structure of the participants in the camp. In addition to the overviews of the number of boys / girls who have already registered, Bookacamp shows the age structure in the backoffice.

Readonly access

Read access for supervisors is used a lot during the season and answers questions about participants directly in the camp, e.g. if the doctor needs emergency contact details. Read access has recently received a few optimizations that make it easier to navigate on small cell phone displays. In addition, a profile page of the participant can be called up directly in read access.

Transfer information

If parents provide individual travel information, for example because they appear earlier at the check-in, this can now be stored directly in booking and the information appears in the exports and read access. Camp leaders immediately have all the information about arrival and departure ready.

Diary

There are often incidents during the camp that the office should know about in case parents call. If noteworthy events are stored as a supervision note, there is now a diary with which you can get an overview in the morning at the beginning of the working day. With this information you will no longer be surprised by a phone call.

External access data - e.g. language test

If you want to store access data for each booking for an external tool, in order to then send them collectively to all bookings of an event, you can now find this in the booking processing view. One area of usage are language tests before the camp starts. This saves the tedious and error-prone creation of individual emails.

Payment provider Saferpay

In addition to Girosolution, Klarna Sofort, Adyen and direct debit by Bookacamp, there is an immediately available integration to the payment service provider Saferpay. Saferpay has all common payment methods in its range.

Synchronization of the booking status between travel agent and tour operator

If the travel agent and tour operator are both part of the Bookacamp network, the status of a forwarded booking can now be synchronized. This eliminates the annoying request for the booking confirmation for the agent.

Classification of supervisors

In order to structure the classification of the suitability of a supervisor, you can now find some input fields in the profile to note information about the subjective impression and suitability as a supervising person.

Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

Bookacamp integrates Adyen as a payment service provider 2021/05/11

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Many Bookacamp users rely on payment service providers to make online payments as easy as possible for their customers. Bookacamp has added the European provider Adyen with its Pay by Link product to the list of connected services. Thus, all users of Bookacamp benefit automatically and free of charge from the new service provider. Adyen covers a huge list of payment systems. SEPA direct debit, Paypal, GiroPay, Visa, Mastercard and iDEAL in the Netherlands are very popular in German-speaking countries.

The integration with Adyen is done with your own settings. All you need is your own Adyen account.

Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

Customers book HanseMerkur travel insurance directly in Bookacamp 2021/03/04

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Bookacamp celebrates the first insurance policy on March 2nd

After Bookacamp published the payment by direct debit in february, a month later the next big highlight follows: From now on, Bookacamp's users can offer their customers the booking of a travel insurance with HanseMerkur directly during the booking process. Bookacamp is proud to work in partnership with the HanseMerkur. The selection of insurance products is part of the negotiotion between the tour operator and HanseMerkur and they are adapted to the needs of the tour operator. The insurance products protect parents from cancellation costs, as well person and property damage.

How does it work?

After the tour operator has found the perfect products in communication with the HanseMerkur, only the agency number of the tour operator must be stored in Bookacamp. Then the tour operator decides at the push of a button whether the billing happens via direct accounting (billing directly between customer and insurer) or agency accounting (billing between tour operator and customer). Bookacamp individually determines the insurance offers for each booking during the booking process and stores them until the booking is confirmed by the tour operator. The insurance is automatically reconfirmed, so that there is only little effort for the tour operator and customer.

The integration with the HanseMerkur is now available for every tour operator and agent from Bookacamp.
If you want to learn more about the integrations of Bookacamp, please register a free demo account.

Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

Bookacamp & Berlitz Germany integrate their systems 2021/01/25

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Bookacamp serves many tour operators, tour agents and event organizers as a daily tool for organizing your work and is always looking for ways to improve standard workflows. A widespread time waster arise at the interfaces to third-party systems, for example during transmission of bookings between a travel agent and the tour operator. Where in the past bookings were sent by fax, it is now possible to establish seamless integration between different providers.

System integration is now available between Berlitz Germany and Bookacamp, so that bookings can be transferred from Bookacamp to Berlitz at the push of a button and the annoying forwarding of booking data via email can be omitted. This procedure is not only more time-saving than before, but is much less susceptible to errors than copying from emails.

It works that simple:

• Bookacamp's agency system offers an option of connecting to Berlitz with a single click to activate.
• A Berlitz booking is reviewed and confirmed directly in Bookacamp by the travel agent.
• All confirmed bookings are automatically delivered through the interface to Berlitz.
• The bookings delivered are processed at Berlitz and (back)confirmed through the interface.
• Done.

The interface is immediately available to all Bookacamp users free of charge.

If you want to learn more about Bookacamp's interfaces, please register a free demo account.

Author: Mathias Methner

Link of the article

Bookacamp Redesign

1303 updates files later 2021/01/08

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Bookacamp's birthday was in January 2015 - 6 years ago - and we are proud to have processed tens of thousands bookings for tour operators, travel agents and organizers of online and offline events. One of the success factors of Bookacamp is the constant continuous improvement of every component. We are particularly grateful for the many ideas, tips and messages that we have received from already 147 users and would like to say a big thank you for it.

A lot has happened in the 6 years. Addons and features were added and now it was time to update the entire user interface of Bookacamp. 1303 changed files, 45,213 changed and 134,964 deleted lines of source code. What an amazing number.

The new interface is more modern, looks smoother and uses the latest browser features to give both, the users of the Bookacamp Backoffice, but also the many thousands of parents, children and event participants, a special experience when booking camps and registering for events. In particular, the increasing number of users with mobile devices benefit from larger fonts and controls and better loading times.

Feel free to register your demo account and see our new user interafe in action.

Author: Mathias Methner

Link to the article

YAGNI & KISS 2020/11/12

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Bookacamp is a software product for the (youth) travel industry and combines excellent knowledge of software development with professional knowledge of the requirements and processes of the travel industry. But there is always the question of which features and functionalities are required in which form in order to make the communication and administration of bookings / events as easy and quick as possible. Since Bookacamp was founded in 2015, we have been working very closely with product owners and pilot customers. That's nothing special - that's how agile software development works. The special thing is that the product owners are users and partners of Bookacamp themselves, i.e. the tour operators and travel agents whose requirements arise from day-to-day business. Bookacamp is very happy to receive this open input.

In order to keep an overview of all requirements, we use a ticket system. In the last 5 years, 1811 tickets have been created in this way, 94 of which are currently open in different sizes. Bookacamp uses two principles to decide which problem a ticket is going to be developed and for what there may be a different solution.

YAGNI - You Arent't Gonna Need It

Every feature and every problem solution has different characteristics and there are often dozens of ways to expand a feature. The tightrope act is to decide which functionalities will be used later and whether there is someone who needs a solution. Unless a requester exists, we often decide not to implement something at the current time and wait to see how usage develops.

KISS - Keep It Simple & Stupid

Some things are easier to do than others - but the general rule is that a simple and understandable solution is preferable to a complex and complicated one. This applies to decisions in software development as well as in the structure of user interfaces and processes.

Author: Mathias Methner

Updates in July 2020/08/08

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June usually is a bit quieter, so major changes to processes and new features do not disturb the ongoing season. A few minor things are still worth mentioning:

• Automatic booking confirmation
  To save more time for standard processes, bookings can now be automatically confirmed by the system. The invoice is generated and sent as soon as a new registration arrives. The new feature can be (de-)activated in the settings menu as required.
• Minimal event registration
  For free (information) events it can be useful to keep the hurdle for registration as low as possible. This minimal registration only requires the name and e-mail of the applicant.

Updates of June 2020/06/05

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43 tickets have been closed and implemented since March. A selection of the most important innovations follows here:

• Temporary VAT reduction
  From july 1st to december 31, 2020, the federal government of Germany decided to cut 3% on the standard tax rate and 2% on the reduced tax rate. What effects this has on the invoicing of the travel industry, whose service period often does not correspond to the invoicing period, must now be clarified. Bookacamp will make the adjustments to the software available before first of july.
• RSS - Don't miss any news
  Many mail programs and browsers have a feed reader to subscribe to news. Bookacamp's german blog now delivers the newsfeed readable for feed readers. So you don't miss any more information.
• Automatic synchronization between agency and organizer
  In order to further minimize the coordination effort between the travel agent (agency) and the organizer, the availability of the free spots can now be automatically synchronized in the background. The current cycle is 1x on the hour.
• Yes / No answers with consent
  It happens, that information is important when booking. An example is the question of whether a child can swim or can participate in certain sports. Consent has been expanded to request a decisive answer on the last page of the booking process.
• Various options per session
  Among other things, it is possible to decide per session, whether information about the t-shirt size or class level of the participant should be obtained. All in all, it is worth looking at the entire Expert Mode tab when creating a session to get to know Bookacamp's high degree of customization.