From an open sign on the street to 3,000 visitors on the Reindeer Farm

“Our business has grown so much since we started with FareHarbor. With the help of the software, we had more time to improve and expand our offerings, accommodate more people, and provide the best experience to our customers.”
Lauren Waite
Manager

The business

Reindeer Farm is a family-owned and run business in Palmer, Alaska. Their guests get to explore the beautiful property in guided or self-guided tours and see (you guessed it!) a herd of about 100 reindeer. Over the years, the farm has also adopted highland cows, moose, elk, yaks, bison, pigs, chickens and more.

We sat down with Lauren Waite who currently runs the business with her mom, Denise Hardy. As she puts it, “we have added a variety of animals, because we are animal people. It’s in my DNA, we’ve always been animal people.”

Learn more about Reindeer Farm’s history and how FareHarbor helped to bring their business online and shape it to be what it is today.

A bit of backstory

a herd of cattle standing on top of a grass covered field Lauren’s grandfather, Tom Williams, grew up on the property that originally was a working dairy farm. With a love for animals all his life, Tom’s dream was to own reindeer — and in 1987 that dream came true.

The original plan was to sell reindeer meat, but once locals and tourists started showing up to visit the animals, a new business plan sprang to action. Beginning in the 1990s and still gaining more popularity today, Reindeer Farm began giving animal tours.

In 2010, Denise Hardy (Tom’s daughter) became the owner of the business. And after Lauren returned from college in 2015, she became a full time employee assisting her mom with the operations. They both live on the farm along with Lauren’s husband who helps out on weekends and their three children.

Over the years, Reindeer Farm grew to have more animals and would gain popularity. However, without an online booking software, it was hard to manage the business efficiently and maximize their sales.

The challenges

Any operator who has used pen and paper as their reservation system knows that it can create organizational inefficiencies for a tour and activity business. This was no different for Reindeer Farm.

Below are a few of the obstacles that impeded their success:

Limited reach and marketing efforts. For years Reindeer Farm’s only form of marketing was an “open” sign on the side of the road to attract interested customers to tour the farm. This, of course, restricted how many people knew the farm gave tours — or that they existed at all.
Only a handful of customers a day. Without specific tour times, walk-up customers would visit the business sporadically. Lauren said it was common that a group would come in for the tour, and before that one would finish, another group of customers would stop in. This meant they needed to start the tour over immediately which would lead to them only having about 10 customers for the entire day.
No time to improve business. During working hours, Reindeer Farm staff needed to standby to wait for walk-in customers. The flow was inconsistent which did not leave time to work on other aspects of the business like enhancing their tours or operations.

Why they chose FareHarbor

The switch to using online booking software is a big step for any operator. Lauren mentioned that “FareHarbor really changed our perspective of what our business could be”.

When Denise was searching for a booking software, FareHarbor had already approached the company with several solutions to the problems Reindeer Farm was running into.

What really sold them on the product was:

Comprehensive onboarding and training. FareHarbor’s onboarding and support teams empowered them with training materials and expert knowledge to become power users on the platform and learn to set up the software for the different activities that they offer.
FareHarbor built them a new website. FareHarbor built and helped manage an optimized, free website for Reindeer Farm which helped bring their business online and made the company more accessible for customers traveling to Alaska. [Please note that this service is only available to businesses after evaluation].
A pricing model that worked for their business. While some competitors were offering discounts for their software, FareHarbor’s pricing model worked with their needs and would not cost anything for the business.

The solutions

Once Reindeer Farm chose to join FareHarbor and allowed customers to book with them online — the benefits kept rolling in.

To name a few notable successes:

Intuitive online booking software. FareHarbor brought Reindeer Farm online which was the turning point. It allowed customers to book in advance which gave the business more time to expand and take care of the farm as well as the need to hire more guides.
Simple to make changes. Reindeer Farm’s offerings change seasonally. They can easily update their experiences to reflect the right time of year in a few clicks within the Dashboard.
QR code scanning. This FareHarbor feature drastically increased the speed of customer check-in, especially for Reindeer Farm’s fall festival that can easily bring in 3,000 customers a day.
Promo code campaigns. With FareHarbor, Reindeer Farm could diversify their marketing strategy and use promo codes to incentivize local businesses to refer their customers to the farm and track the results of their campaigns.
24/7 support with helpful agents. Although they are now seasoned users of FareHarbor, in the beginning, Lauren and others had a lot of questions. She noted that, “I know when we first started with you guys, we would email every time we needed to make an update. I appreciate that your technicians also teach me every time we talk so I can do it myself next time.”

The results

As a long-term partner of FareHarbor, Reindeer Farm has been able to improve with us and adopt new features to maximize their growth. In almost a decade, they have seen unbelievable results which has let them bring more animals to the farm and entertain more guests who simply want to know what a reindeer really looks like!

Daily bookings increased up to 50x. From only 10 people all day to upwards of 500 customers on their busy summer days, Reindeer Farm saw an extraordinary increase in reservations.
Revenue increased on average 64% YoY in the past three years using FareHarbor. Reindeer Farm has partnered with FareHarbor for 8 years (and counting!). In the past three years, they still have seen an impressive jump in revenue.
No more missed bookings. As a business in Alaska, most customers plan their trips to the state from a different time zone. Before partnering with FareHarbor, if potential customers called during non-business hours, the farm would lose the reservation.
More time on their hands. They were able to fine tune their offerings and create new tours to appeal to more audiences. This includes, themed and seasonal tours, a pumpkin patch experience (the only one in the area), and more.
Diversified revenue streams. Reindeer Farm built a new gift shop last year. Customers now leave the farm through the gift shop which allows a better chance to upsell merchandise and retail items.

Without a booking software, Reindeer Farm was unable to organize their business in a way that could bring in the most money possible. Now after nearly a decade of being brought online, there is no telling where Reindeer Farm will go next.

As Lauren put it, “FareHarbor has changed our lives”.