Bespoke Booking Systems for The Hairy Coo

Modernizing a Classic System

After launching the 1-Day free Highlands Tour in 2010 The Hairy Coo needed a digital replacement for their manual tour sign up. Before, they would take phone calls and email bookings directly and note them down in a spreadsheet. The replacement booking system was a simple, bespoke system, that was a suitable alternative at the time. However, as the tour evolved, so too did the needs of the company.

There was no native mobile support, so customers found the UI difficult to navigate. There was also a last-minute requirement that would allow The Hairy Coo to hold deposits in case of no-shows, this strained the system. This additional feature was added, allowing The Hairy Coo to request that no-shows pay the fee, however there was no strict enforcement, no AMEX support, and the fees for the payment system were high. On top of this, the system was starting to experience significant slowdown along with semi-regular outages. It was clear that this original system needed to go.

OMNIUX was brought in to design and develop a new system. This new booking system was built using React JS, Asp Core (C#), and MySQL. The system was built to be mobile-first, scalable to support multiple tours a day, and utilized the Stripe API to hold customer payment information in case of no-shows. This system also allowed for users to customize booking, no-show, and reminder emails through the MailGun, a 3rd party Email management platform.