What Has Western Spirit Learned About Their Solution So Far?
Change is worth it
Moving to an online booking platform that connects their guides, administrators, and guests saved them 30+ hours a week, which is about $65,000/year.
Spend time on what matters
With all the time saved, Western Spirit has been able to dedicate more time on training, operations, making reservations throughout the country.
Software as a partner
Having a partner willing to build a platform that fits their operations instead of the other way around has changed their business (for the better).
“It's been really great to even be gone for the holiday. We were closed for two weeks for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's and to still see reservations come through and still see everything happened without us having to be here has been really great.”
Brendon CameronGeneral Manager 
“Before Origin, each reservation from start to finish took between 20-30 minutes.
Now all we have to do is make sure they're qualified to go on that trip, and then we confirm their booking. That takes two minutes. So we went from 30 minutes to two minutes.”
Brendon CameronGeneral Manager
“Origin didn't just help—it changed our business. We went from older and generic systems to Origin, updated. Even just the process that our customers see is more updated and streamlined. It's saved us a lot of time and it's been really night and day as far as what the customer sees and what we see from our end.”
Brendon CameronGeneral Manager
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The Situation
Spending too much time on reservations, not enough on operations
Western Spirit is known for their amazing guided bike trips throughout the United States. And all the work behind-the-scenes is what made them as successful as they are today. But with success came way too many hours wasted on things they could automate instead.
“We had—no exaggeration—over 20 systems that we had to feed in and out of Airtable in order to make the reservations happen for us, using zaps, coming in and out. This would go to Google Sheets and elsewhere. It was super convoluted,” Brendon told us.
“We had an employee who dedicated half of her time just to reservations because of all the steps that she had to do and oversee,” Brendon said. She even begged Brendon they had to do something different.
The Snag
When one system went down, everything shut down
Then one day, Airtable went down.
“We literally were at a standstill. We couldn’t do anything. And they had no customer service. It was a hot mess. It got bad.” Even while using their tried and true 20 systems and apps, the Western Spirit team couldn’t take bookings when one system went down.
Bendon immediately started looking for an online booking system that was customizable enough to mold to their complex operations.
The Solution
From 20+ systems to run their operations down to 2
“It wasn’t an exaggeration that we were using 20 different systems. So, we went from 20 to two systems. And Origin is solving everything else in there,” Brendon told us.
They rolled out Origin in July and by mid-August the Western Spirit team realized they were saving 30+ hours per week, which meant saving roughly $65,000 per year to pay someone to manually do reservations.
Their Operations team were excited to spend those extra hours on training, operations, guide time, lodging, making hundreds of reservations throughout the country and campsites and hotels, and making sure they continue to offer the best guided bike tours their clients will ever experience.
“It’s meant money for us and more time on the things that matter. For us, what Origin can’t do is help make a better Day Three for this tour in Oregon. Right? But what you can do is give us more time in our day so we can spend it making sure that Day Three is better in Oregon. That’s what it’s meant to us for sure.”
<span data-buffer="">Automate Your Tasks<span data-metadata="">
Tour operator life is complicated Use a booking platform that simplifies it.
<span data-buffer="">Automate Your Tasks<span data-metadata="">
Tour operator life is complicated Use a booking platform that simplifies it.