How to Automate GlampManager

A glampsite is six units and one changeover day

GlampManager was written for glampsites and nothing else: pods, yurts, bell tents, safari tents, shepherd's huts, treehouses, geodomes and cabins, let by the night. It comes from the UK team behind CampManager.

A glampsite is not a hotel, and the difference is arithmetic. There are six units, or nine, or four, and each has a changeover day. Fill them through the school holidays and the year works. Lose a Saturday in August to a cancellation nobody re-sold and there is no second Saturday in August to make it back with. Plenty of those stays arrive through a channel that keeps its own inbox, its own review score and its own copy of your availability.

So GlampManager carries what the site runs on: the booking chart per unit, who arrives and departs today and this week, what deposit was taken and what balance is still owed, which channel sold the stay, and the confirmation and pre-arrival email each guest has already had.

The pod has to be ready by two, and everything else waits

Changeover day at a small site is one or two people and a van.

They are draining a hot tub, cutting grass and getting six units turned round before two o'clock, and the office work happens on a phone between them. Somebody checks whether the balance on the Friday arrival came in. Somebody opens the Booking.com extranet to see whether a guest messaged there instead of by email. Somebody reads the forecast, because a wind warning changes whether the bell tents stay up. Somebody notices the review from last week that nobody answered. Somebody works out whether the two nights left in the middle of August are priced like the two nights either side of them.

None of that is neglect. The pod has to be ready by two, and everything else stays negotiable right up until it is not.

GlampManager

The weekend, read on Thursday Saturday's arrivals and departures with the balance owed on each, the units needing a full turn, and the party sizes that decide how much firewood goes out.

Messages left in the wrong inbox Guest messages sitting unanswered in a channel extranet rather than your own email, collected each morning with the booking they belong to.

August priced against the lane Comparable sites read on the listing pages for the same dates, so a gap in your own calendar is priced against what is actually selling nearby.

The iCal sync stops the double booking, not the surprise

GlampManager covers the booking and the money around it well, and a site paying for it should be using all of this before adding anything.

The dashboard shows arrivals, departures and bookings for today and the week ahead, with occupancy and performance broken down by accommodation type and by the booking sources that brought them in. Booking charts put every unit on one colour-coded calendar and let a booking be made straight from it, with real-time availability, alternative dates when a stay does not fit, and costs recalculated on amendment. Automated emails carry the confirmation, the payment chase, the pre-arrival note and the post-stay feedback request. Deposit policies, online balance payments, a virtual terminal, invoices, discounts and promo codes handle the money. Two-way iCal channel management syncs availability and allocation with Pitchup, Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia, Tripadvisor, Canopy and Stars and Cool Camping, and reviews can be captured from guests directly.

All of that acts on a booking already in the system. The channel's own extranet is a different place, and so is the message a guest left there, the review score that channel displays, the forecast for your postcode, and the rate the site up the lane has put on for the same weekend.

Thursday is early enough to fix most of what Saturday brings

Two days is the difference between moving a guest and apologising to one.

Saturday's arrivals and departures listed with the balance still owed on each, the units needing a full turn against those staying on, and the party sizes that decide how many firepit bundles go out. The forecast and any weather warning for the site's own postcode set against who is under canvas, so the decision about the bell tents gets taken on Thursday.

Channel extranets opened in turn: unanswered guest messages sitting in Booking.com or Airbnb, the review score each channel is showing, and whether your rates and minimum stays for August match what your own booking page says. Comparable sites on the listing platforms read for the same dates, so a gap in your own August is priced against what is genuinely selling. New reviews collected with the stay and the unit they came from. Guests whose balance falls due in the next fortnight, listed by arrival date.

Nothing there answers a guest. A reply to a review or a message in an extranet is written by a person, because on a six-unit site the owner's voice is the product.

The owner keeps the last word with guests

Turning six pods round by two is the job. Opening four other websites while doing it is not, and that is the half nobody gets to.

WebRun is an agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens GlampManager, the channel extranets, the forecast and the review sites, reads what is on each screen, and leaves one page with the weekend already on it.

It runs on your schedule in your own private environment, and you can watch a run and stop it. Anything addressed to a guest is drafted and waits for you. The workflows below are already built, and each one names what it opens.