Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools & Spa is one of New Zealand's most beloved tourism destinations — reviving guests with mineral-rich hot pools, day spas, and steam rooms. With a small reservations team handling high enquiry volumes, they turned to Yonder's AI chatbot, Reviews, and marketing tools to reduce workload, improve guest communications, and drive membership sales through a powerful Ibis booking system integration.
With a small, dedicated reservations team, they leaned on Yonder’s AI chatbot and marketing tools to reduce repetitive workload, resolve common customer issues faster, and better direct guests to the right products.
We met with Ollie, Sacha, and Jess, from the Hanmer Springs team, to tap into their experience with Yonder.
145 staff hours saved annually. In the last 12 months, 91% of chatbot enquiries were helped immediately, with a further 2% leaving contact details for follow-up.
"The Chatbot has saved the team a lot of time and meant that we can focus on the guests who really need help."
Increased membership sales. The quiz simplified a complex pricing structure — helping guests confidently choose the right pass rather than abandoning the purchase.
"People who might have just abandoned their booking, actually complete the purchase because the quiz simplifies it."
The quiz received 1,343 interactions with 961 completions in the last 12 months — helping Hanmer Springs achieve ROI within the first couple of days of each month.
Website optimisation insights. Chatbot interactions revealed content gaps, prompting website improvements.
"The chatbot brings up the parts of our website where actually, it's not very clear and we need to adjust something. It actually helped us improve."
Smarter internal workflows. Staff now receive chatbot alerts via email — eliminating the need to manually check the portal for unresolved conversations.
Marketing data from the quiz. Even incomplete quiz interactions generate valuable retargeting data.
"Even if they don't finish the purchase, that process is still marketing data that we can use."
"Usually with our service providers, we're chasing meetings. With Yonder, they're the ones following up with us!"
Whether it was onboarding, troubleshooting, or making adjustments, Yonder’s team consistently responded quickly, followed up without being prompted, and offered practical solutions tailored to the business’s needs.
They appreciated having real people behind the product—people who not only understood the tourism industry but also genuinely cared about their success. The Yonder team's responsiveness made it easy to try new features quickly, and the platform itself is intuitive.
"The platform is so easy to use. Even without training, it's hard to get lost."