“Dream Big. Start Small.” That’s the motto of the 2015 National Small Business Week, and we are celebrating our clients who live that motto every day.
ActivityRez has been a Ruby client for more than three years, and we’ve seen them grow a great deal in that time. We chatted with Marketing Manager Michael Folling about ActivityRez’s work helping small businesses in the tourism industry.
Tell us a little about ActivityRez.
ActivityRez builds reservation software for the travel industry. Our company was founded in 2000 after we noticed a need in the industry for travel agencies to be able to connect to activity suppliers and sell their products in real time. Soon after we built Hawaii’s first activity supplier extranet. Today we still help enterprise level travel agencies and small- to mid-size business from around the world sell their tours and activities online via the ActivityRez web booking engine, and in person via the ActivityRez point of sale.
Why did you choose to work in the tourism industry?
Growing up and living in Hawaii, it’s only natural that everyone works in the tourism industry at some point since it’s such a huge industry here. I chose to work at ActivityRez specifically for a couple of reasons. First, working for a technology company that’s solving problems for an industry that’s still maturing can be a great learning experience. Second, as a marketer, it’s an exciting challenge to market a B2B product because every business has its own unique needs.
What is your favorite part of your job?
I really enjoy figuring out new ways to create value for our customers. If our customers feel they’re getting value from our product it makes everything feel a lot less like a business relationship and more like a partnership.
What most excites you when working with your clients?
Solving their problems. Since each customer has a unique way of doing business they’re used to reservation software not doing everything they need it to do. When we say “Yeah, we can do that” it really gives them a sense or excitement and relief, and because our product is made for enterprise businesses we almost always have a solution for our customer’s problems.
What do you like best about working with Ruby?
I really like that Ruby feels automated in the sense that it just works so well. I don’t have to worry about it yet the service still has a personal touch, so our customers still feel like they’re being attended to.
Thank you Michael for taking the time to talk with us about ActivityRez. Here’s to another year of growth!
