Preparing for GDPR

Going into effect next Friday (May 25th), the European Union’s new data privacy law GDPR is helping to codify consumer privacy and data protection rules. Even if you have not explicitly heard the name “GDPR,” you have probably seen some of the fallout of this rule, as companies email out updated privacy polices.

Although you are not based in the European Union, these new rules likely impact your business. As a result, it is good to have an understanding of the impacts and what you may be required to do as a result of the rules.

GDPR rules apply to any business that collects information about citizens of the European Union. If you have any EU guests reserving online or providing personal information when inquiring, reserving or registering, these rules govern such data collection and use. But even for non-EU guests, the ideas and rules set out in GDPR are designed to codify privacy and security best practices. Such practices are a good roadmap for all customer interactions; adopting and applying these practices will help gain consumer trust and ensure that personal information is carefully managed. And as other regions adopt similar privacy safeguards (California has a ballot initiative that will be voted on this Fall), the GDPR launch provides a good opportunity to review your policies and practices.

Broadly, GDPR requires that companies:

  • understand how and where personal information is collected and stored
  • develop explicit data governance policies about how they manage such data
  • have clear privacy policies that enumerate data collection, retention and related policies
  • ensure that guests provide unambiguous, granular consent for data collection
  • maintain technological best practices for data transmission and storage
  • be prepared to share collected data, discontinue data collection, and/or expunge data on a person at her/his request.

A full list of requirements should come from a more authoritative source, but these are the basics. To learn more about some of the specific details, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office has a good outline of twelve steps to prepare for GDPR.

And there is nuance to the above requirements as well. For example, MailChimp explains that pre-checked boxes do not count as consent. There blog post has other best practices for helping ensure that your email mailing list is compliant with these requirements.

Most of the rules and requirements are about company policy and governance, and so require outfitters to be careful and conscientious in how they collect and use personally identifiable information. But the rules also touch on a number of technological details.

Already, Arctic Reservations is designed to store information in a way that secures personal details, limits unauthorized use and defends against data breaches. For example, the software implements encryption and security best practices, access is controlled and logged, and security tools such as user permissions and two factor authentication are available to manage user roles.

We have begun rolling out updates to further assist with GDPR compliance. These updates will effect two areas in the software:

Customer records. GDPR ensures that individuals can request a copy of all personal information that exists, and can request that such information be deleted. A new option has been added when deleting a customer record to fully expunge data. This will remove all data regarding the customer, including even their name. Note that such an option should be applied with caution (especially with previous guests, as some information retention may be required for liability and insurance purposes); as a result, this option is only available to administrators.

Checkout and inquiry forms. The checkout form has been updated to explicitly reference agreement with the privacy policy, in addition to the payment terms and cancellation policy. Similarly, text has been added to other online forms including inquiries and registration. We recommend that outfitters add their privacy policy URL to Arctic, in the general section of the settings page.

Finally, it is worth reiterating the details of Arctic’s privacy policy. We do collect basic information on outfitters to ensure that we can provide service, issue invoices, etc. In addition, we aggregate anonymized usage information and statistics across all installations. This information helps us understand how features are used and prioritize future feature development. But we ensure that such information contains no personally identifiable information on your guests. Today, we updated our privacy policy to clarify these protections.

Note: This is our interpretation of GDPR and is for informational purposes only. Do not rely on this as legal advice or to determine how GDPR will impact your business. For comprehensive guidance, we recommend consulting with a legally qualified professional.

Building on Arctic – The API

Today’s blog post will be a somewhat nerdy diversion from the usual topics, touching on a very powerful feature available to outfitters that want to do something unique or powerful using the information stored in Arctic Reservations. This is achieved through the Arctic API (which stands for application programming interface). The Arctic API allows another computer program, or a website, to connect to Arctic Reservations in order to share information between the two programs. Although this might seem like a simple idea, it provides a phenomenal range of possible uses.

Originally, the API was designed to allow extracting live trip availability information. This allowed building custom trip listing or calendar pages that reflected trip availability. But since launching version 2, the API has been expanded substantially to allow a number of additional powerful features.

We even use the API internally for a number of newly deployed features. For example, the new calendar booking interface is built completely off the API. All the code associated with the calendar booking interface is included in our Github repository as an example for those outfitters that want to build their own custom booking interfaces.

Other uses of the API that we have seen include:

  • Our billing system uses the API to create and issue invoices, and record automatic payments details.
  • The API allows extracting accounting information, and has been used to automatically update a separate accounting system.
  • Contact forms on the main outfitter website can be tightly integrated with Arctic to automatically generate customer records and inquiries based on the provided information. (The Github repository includes a complete example of how this works.)
  • User authentication can be built around the API, as it supports OAuth 2. This allows staff to use their Arctic credentials to login to other services, simplifying login management.

The API is not for everyone, and often requires having a knowledgable developer. But for the ambitious outfitters who want to achieve truly custom features or very powerful automation beyond the built in features of Arctic. We are happy to help suggest ways the API can be used to achieve certain features as well (although we can not provide support debugging code).

For those interested in learning more about the API, we recommend checking our Github repository, which includes a comprehensive PHP framework for interacting with the Arctic API. In addition, it includes a number of examples, both trivial demonstrations as well as more real-world use cases.

Giving Back

As we approach our tenth anniversary, we want to give back to the community. We have found three amazing organizations – all in someway related to our work – that we are supporting this year. With our origin serving the whitewater rafting industry, two of the organizations work to conserve and protect wild rivers: Western River Conservancy and American Rivers. In a different realm, but similarly important to us is the open source software community. Many components of Arctic Reservations are possible because of open source software, ranging from the operating system of our servers to the databases that store customer data. In appreciation of the community of volunteers who create such software, we are also supporting the Free Software Foundation. All three organizations are doing great work, and we feel lucky to be one of many providing a small contribution to their efforts.

Happy Holidays

We want to extend our gratitude to all the outfitters that have made 2015 another great year for Arctic Reservations. This season, Arctic helped a quarter of a million guests go on amazing adventures throughout North America. And with the exceptional feedback from the outfitters who use Arctic everyday, we made over 1,000 updates, introducing new features and improving existing ones. And there is so much more to come. Over the last five months, we have been working on a substantial update that will be going live in early 2016.

We want to extend a thank you to all our outfitters, and look forward to announcing many new and exciting updates in the coming months. We wish everyone a happy holidays!

New Feature: Check-In View

We recently launched a new feature for tracking guest arrivals, whether they have a rental or a reservation. For outfitters with many simultaneous activities or large groups arriving, the check-in view provides a clear and concise location to see all upcoming activities, review status information and record when guests arrive.

Check-In View

The system is well suited to both tablets and computers. Each open copy of the check-in report stays synchronized, so if a group checks in with one employee, all other employees will be able to see that the group has arrived and is ready. This enables staff to establish multiple check-in “counters” within the office or at the put-in location. Each staff member can keep tabs on who has arrived and when trips are ready to launch by monitoring when all reservations have been marked as checked in.

In addition to providing a streamlined tool to track arrivals and begin trips or rentals, the check-in view highlights important notes for activities as well, such as missing waivers or any outstanding balance. This way, during the check-in process, staff members can collect any missing requirements and information from guests before the trip begins.

And the whole setup is highly customizable, as with many features in Arctic. The check-in view can include custom columns, activity notes and even be broken down by activity information, such as pickup location.

Overall, we hope this new tool will simplify guest arrival for busy day-trip outfitters and rental operations, making it easier to quickly check in guests and ensure that all information has been received and processed for each guest.

If you want to enable the check-in view on your installation, contact support.

Six Months In

We launched Arctic Reservations version 2 a little over six months ago, and it’s been an amazing six months. We were thrilled to welcome a number of new outfitters into the Arctic community at launch time, and they eagerly took to the new version. With their feedback and support, we refined and polished the software.

Version 2 was our chance to reflect on the first seven years of Arctic and redesign the product from the ground up to be more flexible, more powerful and easier to use. For guests, version 2 introduced a fully redesigned checkout process for online bookings that has greatly increased conversions by further simplify the online shopping experience. In addition, we tried to create a more versatile platform so we could quickly adapt to new needs and implement new features.

Already, outfitters have used version 2 to process almost $5 million in transactions and have provided over 50,000 guests with amazing adventures and experiences. We’ve broadened the horizons in terms of outfitter diversity, adding campgrounds, hotels, aquariums, sea kayaking, zip lines and more. And in the midst of this busy season, we have launched a number of new features for version 2. Since launch, we have introduced the following features:

  • Arctic Retail – a full featured point-of-sale terminal, as well as management options for tracking vendors, purchase orders, and more
  • Gift certificates – with the ability to issue and track gift certificates and customer balance
  • Package management – an extremely versatile package management tool where you simply define what qualifies as a package, and then Arctic looks through your calendar to find all possible packages… no need to define each individually
  • Two new report builders – use a spreadsheet interface to layout and format reports like rosters, trip summaries and more, as well as a pivot table interface to aggregate and analyze data for trends
  • E-Check payments – accept electronic checks and ACH transfers online
  • Powerful new programming interface – to help integrate Arctic with other products, we’ve added an API that allows developers to connect, manipulate and update data in Arctic Reservations (see our open source implementation)

These features just scratch the surface of what is possible in version 2. Currently, we are testing new features and will be rolling out many new ideas over the coming months. And we look forward to helping more of our version 1 customers transition to the new version during their off-season.

Thank you to everyone who has helped make Arctic Reservations version 2 such a success. We can’t wait to share what’s next.

Version 2

For the last 18 months, we have been hard at working reimagining the features and functionality of the ideal reservation and customer relations management system. Based on over seven years of experience working with outdoor adventure companies, we wanted to create a new version of Arctic Reservations that truly addresses the needs of adventure outfitters. There are many challenges to managing scheduling and inventory in the industry, such as sharing inventory across trips and rentals, managing permits and compliance, running multi-location businesses, filing waivers, communicating with guests, etc. Arctic Reservations has long been a leading tool for the industry, but we thought we could do it even better.

Version 2 represents that labor come to life. We have worked to create a new version from the ground up that is even easier to use, but able to rise to the complex challenges that many outfitters have to tackle on a day-to-day basis. The new version introduces many powerful features, including:

  • Manage independent business units through one installation. Finances and configurations are kept separate, while reports and data can be run across the whole organization. User accounts can be specific to one business group, meaning reservationist will be able to easily manage the reservations relevant to their focus.
  • Customize forms and reports to add and remove fields as you see fit. It is possible to tailor Arctic Reservations to your exact business needs.
  • Remarkable new design editors. Customize the look and feel of the guest-facing website and emails in seconds – no coding needed.
  • A powerful new inventory engine that allows you to manage and allocate your limited resources across all sectors of your business: tours, rentals, lodging, retail and more. In addition, rental inventory can now be shared with trip inventory, so that you can better manage your scarce resources.
  • Accept online rentals of rooms and equipment.
  • A full retail POS interface and e-commerce store (coming Spring 2013).
  • And much more…We can’t wait to share the hundreds of new features. Email or call to setup a guided tour.

Today we have started setting up the first version 2 installations for some new and for some existing customers. Over the coming weeks, we will be revising the software, creating a public demonstration installation and working to transition more of our existing customers over the new version.

If you are interested in learning more, please contact us to schedule a guided tour.

Decrease Paperwork with Electronic Waivers

With an increasing number of guests completing their registration forms online these days, many outfitters have been similarly seeking to move waivers and agreements into an automated electronic format. Arctic Reservations has long offered the ability to get guests to complete their trip waivers online, but we have often recommended using this in conjunction with paper waivers. Due to increased demand for electronic waivers, we have been in contact with some of the large industry insurers to discuss the exclusive reliance on electronic waivers. We are happy to announce that you can now greatly simplify the paperwork and compliance demands by taking advantage of the new e-waiver module in Arctic Reservations.

The e-waiver module offers the following safeguards:

  • The program complies with the requirements of the U.S. Federal ESIGN act, and most state regulatory requirements (please contact us regarding your specific state).
  • Each electronic signature is stored in an encrypted, date-stamped format that is uniquely linked to the original customer.
  • The system can handle waivers for minors, as well as allow users to opt for a traditional paper waiver at any time.
  • All completed waivers are securely stored and are fully retrievable for at least seven years.
Implementing this new module can be a great benefit to office efficiency, as it decreases paperwork, decreases storage space and allows you to expedite trip starts.
Existing customers who are interested in exclusively using electronic waivers should speak with a support representative to learn more about the e-waiver module and the necessary implementation steps.

Arctic Photo Kiosk

Arctic Reservations started with a product for guests to exchange photos following their trip. Capturing and sharing photos of the beautiful and exhilarating moments of a trip allows guests to walk away with a tangible reminder of their experience. Today, we are returning to that original focus by adding a new product to the Arctic family. I am pleased to introduce the Arctic Photo Kiosk software.

The existing photo sharing features built into our reservations have been tailored to multi-day tours, while our latest product aims to bring photography functionality to day-trip outfitters. The Arctic Photo Kiosk software is designed to monetize trip photography by offering a comprehensive solution for processing, organizing and presenting photos to guests.

Throughout the day as guests go out on adventures, let your photo staff and/or guides capture magic moments. Feed these photos into the Arctic Photo Kiosk software, which will touch up, resize and group photos. When guests return from their adventure, they can browse photos either at on-site kiosks or once they return home through a special photo e-commerce website. They can select single photographs, or whole sets, to have digitally delivered, printed or burned to CD. The software will manage everything from initial upload of photos through order fulfillment, including offering comprehensive reporting and extensive customization.

Our on-site hardware makes uploads blazing fast and can power touchscreen kiosks, where guests can browse photos as soon as they return from their adventure. Use HD television screens featuring teaser slideshows to get guests interested in their photographs.

Arctic Photo Kiosks also has a powerful backend, capable of handling hundreds of thousands of photos. We put a lot of effort into creating a robust framework that will enable us to rapidly develop new features both for the photo software, and down the road, in new products.

Arctic Photo Kiosks was initially deployed by a California-based outfitter in the spring, and we saw it’s success as hundreds of orders and thousands of photos were processed in the first months of their season. Today, we are excited to make the software publicly available. For more information, including features and access to a demo e-commerce page, head over to the new Arctic Photo Kiosk product page.

Keep All Client Emails in One Centralized Place

For the last three years, a highlight of my work at Arctic Reservations is facilitating our annual Arctic Summit. This one-day conference provides us an opportunity to connect with the outfitters who use Arctic Reservations. During the Summit, we share updates on features added over the last year and hear input for what new ideas and tools should be prioritized going forward. This input has been invaluable in making Arctic Reservations a intuitive, user-friendly, and innovative system.

At last week’s Arctic Summit, we highlighted new features such as the ability to further integrate Arctic Reservations with social networking sites (sharing reservations, photos, etc.) and new cost modeling tools to analyze operating margins and increase profitability. But we also walked away from the Summit with ideas on improving our system even more, ranging from refining the booking process to managing tasks associated with a trip.

We were especially excited about the prospects of one of these ideas and have already implemented it for all the outfitters using Arctic Reservations. Since Arctic was created, it has kept a detailed email log for easy access to past customer interactions, but only those sent through Arctic Reservations. Now, outfitters can configure Arctic Reservations to also store day-to-day email exchanges with customers no matter what email service they use. Each customer record will have a thorough and detailed history of all interactions, helping outfitters offer exceptional service by tracking all customer feedback and requests. No longer will you have to switch between Arctic Reservations and your email client to look for a message received from a specific customer.

This feature is available on all Arctic Reservations installations under Email > External.

Thanks again to all the customers who attended the Summit. We look forward to implementing more of your feedback in the coming months.