Belt Road Seaside Holiday Park: Strategic Business Decisions With Yonder Data

Belt Road Seaside Holiday Park has welcomed guests since 1903. Its cliff-top position above the Tasman Sea and exceptional customer service have made it a beloved destination in Taranaki. Director Anna Crawford spoke with us about how Yonder Reviews drives continuous improvement across the business.

We recently caught up with Anna Crawford, Director of Belt Road Seaside Holiday Park to chat about the key role customer feedback plays in the business — validating that they’re providing 5-star service to their guests and driving continuous business improvement. 

Why Gather Customer Feedback?

"Excellence is one of our company's core values and we rely on guest feedback to help measure how well we are living this value and achieving excellence in the eyes of our customers. Customer feedback is not just important to us in terms of confirming where we are doing well but also where we can improve. We also use feedback to keep up with trends and any changing customer preferences. And of course, we use customer feedback to promote our business and encourage new customers to choose us."

With an NPS of 83, Why Keep Asking?

"We are not perfect and we really want to hear about the times we didn't meet expectations so that we can improve. Also, we need to know what guests are experiencing to identify if there are some trends — e.g. standards slipping etc. In an industry with seasonal staff, it can be hard to maintain high standards and that is where real-time feedback is very useful."

Feedback-Driven Business Decisions

Belt Road uses NPS scores, satisfaction ratings, and online review scores as KPIs — targeting a monthly average of 9/10 for online reviews. Specific customer feedback feeds directly into their continuous improvement and "quick fixes" programmes.

Their survey includes questions designed to generate genuinely constructive input:

"For what reasons did you choose Belt Road Seaside Holiday Park?"

"What, in particular, did you like about Belt Road Seaside Holiday Park?"

"And what might have made your experience more enjoyable?"

"We've used analysis of customer feedback to help build business cases for capital improvements and to assist with decision making, in terms of the urgency and priority of projects already identified (such as wifi or facility building upgrades)."

Why Yonder? The Booking System Integration Makes the Difference

A critical frustration with Belt Road's previous platform was the lack of booking context in feedback.

"Yonder was attractive as it provided solutions to a number of frustrations we were experiencing — including having no visibility to what booking the feedback related to."

Yonder's integration with Belt Road's reservation system (Seekom) means every survey is automatically sent post-stay and linked to the booking — so they can see exactly which unit a guest stayed in when reading any piece of feedback.

"The ability to see reviews across other platforms such as Google and Facebook all within Yonder was also very attractive."

What They've Loved Since Switching

"We like being able to see the feedback live, and knowing the full background of each response is such a game changer for us when it comes to making improvements and following up on any problems."

Belt Road's average survey response rate over the last six months: 41% — over 25 guests providing feedback per week.

The "heard by staff" field in Yonder allows the team to input feedback from paper in-room surveys — centralising all feedback sources in one place and eliminating the old Excel spreadsheet.

"For the first time this year, we will be using Yonder at our Council KPI review instead of spreadsheets!"

On incentivised responses: Belt Road previously offered monthly voucher prizes to drive survey completion. Since switching to Yonder, their response rate is as high — or higher — with no incentive required.