Turisme de Barcelona’s Success with Palisis
Hear how Turisme de Barcelona, a Destination Marketing Organization (DMO), started their search out of necessity to find a stable channel manager and how they experienced loads of improvements. Being a DMO, they have a private side of the organization that maintains tourist information centres and runs campaigns. Revenues are vital to running their business and keeping their tourism information centres operating. They have obligations from the public side, but they are also a consortium with a foundation built on third parties products, plus their own offerings. They distribute all of these products through connections, partnerships, OTAs, or anyone else interested in the products and offerings.
Turisme de Barcelona has been growing a lot since 2000. Their first product, a hop-on-hop-off bus, was actually born in 1992, which is a joint venture with public transportation. The organisation runs a well-known city monument called, The Columbus Monument, manages and operates the successful program pass called, the City Card, plus guided walking tours and even offers excursions that go outside of Barcelona.
“We had lots of growth while also opening up extensively to the B2B market with more resellers looking for our products. This growth created a problem for us because the more we grew, the more we needed an optimised, automatic system for bookings. We needed a system that could help us, jump that ring in the chain”
Gianluca Camaggio, Sales Manager
Our channel management partnership began in July 2022, but Gianluca Camaggio spent a couple of years researching their options and exploring what was on the market.
Museu Nacional dArt de Catalunya
Gianluca Camaggio explained, “I had a talk with everybody in the business, and then at the end of the day, I decided to work together with Palisis. The main reason was the ease of the technological side. We have a subsystem we rely on for websites, e-commerce, etc., so the connections were very important. Palisis was the best option; the technicians, you have are top-notch. We had dedicated technical support following us; they helped us with the onboarding, conducted the tests and connected to the API system that we established just one year before.”
Our systems automated the flow of bookings they received from the excursions and tours line of business. They identified that the lesser quantity of bookings during the pandemic was the perfect time to make this shift.
“Right now, we are finding ourselves at basically 90% of the flow we had in 2019, so that means everything came out smoothly and at the right time”
Gianluca Camaggio, Sales Manager
Turisme de Barcelona needed a system to help manage all the products, timeslots, capacities, and any requirements with the OTAs. The option to turn off further selling on fully booked activities made a large impact on operating smoothly.
Barcelona is a city that has many rules and regulations regarding the number of participants you can allow for groups; for example, one guide can only operate with a maximum of 20 persons, which they need to abide by.
“Palisis reached and exceeded any expectations we had. You worked with our subsystem, plus, we started with 28 products, and now we are loading 10 more products and activities, and you were able to deliver on what we were looking for from day one”
Gianluca Camaggio, Sales Manager
As a Sales Manager, Gianluca Camaggio expressed that the fact that our system has an overview of all the sales with all their open businesses—daily sales, monthly sales, and comparison between last year and this year is all in one glance is most helpful. In addition, displaying all OTA sales for him to check who’s selling more or less, which product has the most demand or where concentration should be shifted is very strategic. Having everything at one glance is the best thing for a Sales Manager.
“What other companies couldn’t do was make a smart offer that was built to our needs. Eduard from your team delivered what he promised, and even more, he exceeded my expectations. There’s always a follow-up to every need we have,”
Barcelona is a thriving city with many wonderful tourist experiences making lots of opportunities to partner with other operators or attractions who all have their own ticketing systems. Turisme de Barcelona relies on Palisis to deliver specific PDF files, QR codes, and other customer details to ensure seamless experiences for all of their travellers.
Turisme de Barcelona found that the OTAs always suggest you have a channel manager, and if you offer live availabilities, you get more bookings which they have experienced as being true.
Gianluca Camaggio commented, “Palisis is a reliable partner; all the OTAs recommend Palisis as a successful technology solution. For me, the most important detail is the fact that you are always improving in what you’re doing. You keep up with the technology evolution, with the development of every kind of necessity for the market, being able to work with all the OTAs—I think it’s something that stands out with Palisis.”
Looking back, they appreciate the time saved from managing a large volume of booking-related emails. With their processes now automated, they have successfully eliminated the need for hundreds of daily email correspondences. Without answering all the emails, they had time to focus on developing other businesses; for example, they are focused on groups, which groups take time.
“I suggest to all the companies who have never thought about having a channel manager, do it! You will see an improvement from the strategic side, operational side, and sales side. You only see improvements”
Gianluca Camaggio, Sales Manager