Discover the successful partnership between City Sightseeing London and Palisis, spanning from 2015 to the present. Despite initial concerns about functionality, the CSS London management team recognized the system’s capabilities after receiving personalised training and support from the Palisis team. Their commitment to cooperation, responsiveness, and continuous development has solidified their trust in Palisis. With a fleet of 38 buses and a focus on reliability, CSS London values Palisis’ seamless operations, real-time insights, and connectivity. Explore how this partnership has driven success in the competitive travel industry.
Keith Spicer, Managing Director of City Sightseeing London
City Sightseeing London has been a customer since 2021; however, the predecessor had already used Palisis since 2015. In 2021, the management team needed to decide whether they liked the Palisis system and whether to stay or start with an alternative tech solution.
From the outset, it looked like they would not stay with Palisis due to concerns that the system did not have all the functionality they were looking for. However, after a visit and training by our sales team, they recognised that all the features existed and now knew how to operate things smoothly. Our team’s attention and reassurance meant a lot to them, and the leadership felt comfortable and supported to continue forward successfully.
“Palisis offers a level of cooperation and responsiveness that’s hard to come by. I like doing business with nice people, and Palisis are nice people”
Keith Spicer, Managing Director of City Sightseeing London
The CSS London management team has requested that a few new tools be built into the system, and they are just awaiting their rollout. The leadership has expressed full confidence that the developers listened to their concerns and needs, delivering features to match their requests. This willingness to listen, make adjustments, and roll out further options is what has their management so committed to working with Palisis.
“Additional development is the thing that I’m looking forward to next. I’m sure everybody will have listened and will have produced something that resolves most of our concerns, and it will be great because I think it’s being produced by people who genuinely listen to what the issues are. The system is already great in terms of connectivity, credit card payments, those kinds of things”
Keith Spicer, Managing Director of City Sightseeing London
This operator started with six buses and, beginning this season (2023) will run 38 buses in summer in this very competitive travel destination.
The journey has not been flawless regarding the devices on the street—mobile reception. But our responsiveness is what won over this team. When they raised a concern, our Sales Director immediately got on a plane to work with the leaders and sort out any confusion. That kind of response and commitment communicated their value and is a business they wanted to work with.
“The consistent thing is reliability; we don’t have problems day-to-day, we know we fire up the machines in the morning, and they run. Throughout the day, with the click of a button, the management can access where we are, who’s doing what, when did they last sell a ticket, how many people are we carrying, and what’s our capacity now; all of that is very straightforward. Reliability has been taken as read”
Keith Spicer, Managing Director of City Sightseeing London
Our sales team gave them independent and one-to-one training, plus helped to train other team members so that they received the full value of the equipment with approximately 70 devices running. This team welcomes new technology and has been an early adopter of any new device we’ve introduced.
“It tends to be us that have dropped a machine or had a SIM card slip or something. But when we send a machine back, within three or four days, we get a replacement directly. And again, that’s a service where the reliability is of great value to us. Yes, we might have two machines down, but we know there’ll be two replacements here in three or four days’ time”
Keith Spicer, Managing Director of City Sightseeing London
Every time they’ve asked, a personal report has been created to fit their bespoke needs; it’s all inside the system, ready for them. We also looked deeply at their ticket printing. Did they need all the details on each ticket, the spacing, etc.? Changing up a few things on their layout has saved space, time, and paper with printing.
As for connections, this operator is connected to City Sightseeing, in which bookings are received from the corporate website, prompting a City Sightseeing QR code that is redeemable with a Palisis device. In addition, they are connected to 10+ OTAs for reselling. Travellers can buy a hop-on-hop-off ticket plus the London Bridge experience branded under City Sightseeing London as a bundled ticket.
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