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About WebRes By Entee

How To Survive a Volcano...and Save a Fortune!

Few can forget the dramatic impact of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption last year causing the closure of European airspace for 6 days. However many forget who came to the rescue – the shipping industry!

The Passenger Shipping Association described the rescue of stranded air travellers as ‘ferries finest hour’ when over 300,000 additional passengers were carried on European ferries. However for most ferry company IT systems this was not their finest hour...except for those running WebRes.

Watch the WebRes Video

Volcanic resilience

A key element of any professional reservation system is resilience. This allows organisations to take advantage of peaks in demand without the need for extra staff. The volcano tested resilience in a way that would be very hard to simulate and highlighted the benefits of outsourcing IT to a proven expert.

We are proud to report that all WebRes ferry reservation system customers survived the Eyjafjallajökull volcano with no downtime.

Volcanic earnings

WebRes customers saw an average increase of 485% more bookings during the period. This was caused by air restrictions and the fact that most competitor systems crashed. With more volcanic eruptions predicted, can your organisation afford to risk missing these bookings again?

Save a fortune

Choosing WebRes as your ferry reservation system is not just about surviving a volcano. It is also about saving money on your IT costs and allowing you to focus on running ferries. WebRes gives you peace of mind that your system will be future-proof. With up to twenty WebRes programmers working on the system at any one time, we continue to take advantage of new technology including mobile apps, self check-in with ANPR, yield management, auxiliary revenue, third-party connectivity and inventory optimisation.

WebRes history

Development on WebRes, our industry leading ferry reservation system based on Microsoft technology, began in 1997 for P&O Ferries and in 1999 for Stena Line’s agent system.

It was at this time that we were lucky enough to meet two of our now most senior WebRes team – Simon Ashberry, former Head of IT at P&O Ferries, and David O’Brien, former Operations Manager for P&O Ferries.

In the early 2000s we met Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of easyJet, who selected WebRes technology for his new easyGroup transport ventures. His decision was “easy” thanks to WebRes yield management capabilities and low cost outsourcing model.

In 2005, WebRes was chosen by Louis Dreyfus group, a large privately-owned French company who has been in shipping for more than 100 years. This was an exciting time for WebRes as we saw it deployed for LD Lines in all major ports between the UK and France. We then pioneered the first self check-in solution for cars and passengers officially approved by the Maritime & Coastguard Agency.

Since 2008 and the world economic crisis, we have seen a strong increase in WebRes implementations as ferry operators begin to realise there is no need to pay millions for a leading ferry reservation system.

Today WebRes customers are a mix of conventional, fast and freight ferry operators who use the system around the world – from the Bahamas to Malaysia. The system flexibility is also demonstrated by its use in other transportation markets including Deutsche Bahn Gruppe and Tony Fernandes’ Tune Group (Air Asia).

What makes WebRes different from the rest?

WebRes is developed by a privately-owned family company that has focused on shipping for 15 years as the leading supplier of technology, online distribution and port agency services. This means that when you choose WebRes you are selecting a strategic, long-term partner rather than just another IT provider.