You’re locking up on Friday night and stick your head into the workshop. You notice two of the e-bikes booked out for tomorrow’s tour have been waiting for new brake pads since Wednesday.
Thankfully, you know how to fix them yourself and the parts are in the storeroom so you can get everything ready for the guests and guide for the morning.
You run a tight ship, and you’ve got a great team. But this was a near miss and there are just too many near misses for your liking at the moment.
Why The Planner Never Has the Full Picture
It’s easy to say ‘we just need to be more on top of things.’ Maybe add a check before every tour or get the team to update the planner the moment a bike goes into the workshop.
But those bikes had been on the workshop board since Wednesday. Nobody forgot and no-one’s to blame. The team members responsible for updating your rental calendar, tour schedule, workshop board and stock list all do a good job.
The system falls down though because a bike that appears on the workshop board doesn’t automatically come off the rental calendar.
The same types of oversights happen with skis as well. A pair gets written off at the end of winter but the ski hire spreadsheet still shows them as available next season. BRM also has a dedicated ski and snowboard reservation software page for winter rental workflows.
Until a change in one place updates availability everywhere, that Friday walk-through is a feature of your system and not a bug.
Rental businesses just running one service find this, too. Our article, When Bike Rental Operations Start to Feel Unnecessarily Complicated, shows how tough coordination can be without skis, tours or multiple locations adding to the mix.
The shops where Friday walk-throughs don’t turn up surprises aren’t working harder. They’re working from one system where a bike going into the workshop comes off the rental calendar and the tour schedule at the same time.
What It Costs When Your Fleet Is Split Across Four Lists
Having a separate rental calendar, tour schedule, workshop board and stock list make sense but there are costs.
The first is revenue. When a customer comes in, they have to wait for the counter team to check the calendar, workshop, and stock list to see which bikes are available. While they’re waiting, a queue forms behind them which puts other potential customers off coming in.
The second is customer experience. Your team might not spend as long as they want to kit out customers because they’ve got to get through the queue. People like to feel looked after and have someone to answer their questions.
The third is partnerships. Poor reviews for your slow service put tour operators off using you. Chalet owners won’t send groups of skiers your way. You miss out on lucrative seasonal referrals.
Cherish these partnerships as they bring repeat visitors, and repeat visitors are worth holding onto. Further cement your relationship with loyal customers by knowing who they are when they book and walk through the door. We explore the benefits of this in How To Increase Repeat Bookings Without Increasing Admin.
But none of these issues go away with a morning briefing or shared checklist. Until your stock, bookings and prep lists update each other automatically, gaps appear no matter how good your team is.
More Services, More of The Same Problems
Many rental businesses start with a small fleet and a single spreadsheet. That’s just about manageable. But add e-bikes, kids’ bikes and skis, and it gets a lot more complicated.
Set up guided tours and you need to hold bikes in reserve, book a guide and sometimes arrange transport.
If the counter team doesn’t know, a walk-in might hire one of those bikes the afternoon before and your Saturday morning tour is a bike short.
Every new service you add is another list your team has to cross-check by hand.
Until one system holds bookings, tours and workshop jobs, and against the same stock where relevant, each one makes the next conflict harder to spot.
What Your System Needs to Do to Get This Right
Your system needs to give your team a single, live view of every booking, repair and reservation.
So, when a bike is booked for a Saturday tour, it comes off the rental calendar for that day.
Skis that go into the workshop come off the stock list but you can see when they’re back in circulation. You can take that booking for next Wednesday after all because you know the bike will be ready.
Doing this manually is possible but tough. A shared Google Sheet with colour-coded tabs for rentals, repairs and tours can get you part of the way. It falls apart though when a formula stops working or the sheet gets too complex to maintain.
Your team can easily manage a spreadsheet. The issue is whether, even with all the work your team puts into it, they can see bookings, repairs and availability in one place when a customer comes through the door.
Putting It to The Test
Rental businesses are complex with many moving parts. But even the most talented team needs one system that keeps bookings, repairs and availability in sync. Otherwise, that’s how double-bookings, missed repairs and misallocated tour bikes slip through the net.
To take control now and as you grow your business, book a demo with bike.rent Manager. See how rental businesses manage bookings, repairs, tours, and availability across every service from one platform.
