James Bouldin from ParcVu powered by Booking Experts joins Dave McRobbie to talk booking abandonment, holiday snacking, flexible stays and AI in guest communication.
It starts with a spinning wheel. Not a metaphor — an actual loading wheel on a booking website. James Bouldin has spent 15 years in UK travel and tourism, much of it at Hoseasons, and that wheel is still his biggest bugbear. Not because it is slow. Because it is the moment a potential guest starts to wonder whether they should bother.
The conversation covers a lot of ground, but the thread running through it is consistent: the holiday park industry is roughly 10 to 15 years behind hotels in how it uses technology, and most of that gap shows up in the guest experience. Booking friction. Poor availability messaging. Communication that is reactive rather than proactive. And a reluctance to offer the flexible, short-break options that guests are increasingly expecting as standard.
James makes a point that parks with 60 or 70 percent repeat business often wear that as a badge of honour. He is gently brutal about it. Repeat guests are loyal right up until they are not there anymore. New guests need to come from somewhere, and the booking experience they land on is often not set up to convert them.
The average holiday stay has shifted considerably. James recalls the average sitting around five nights when he started in the industry. When he left Hoseasons, it was in the threes. People are taking more, shorter breaks – what he calls holiday snacking – and the platforms guests are already comfortable using, Airbnb in particular, have trained that expectation. You go when you want, for as long as you want, and the friction is low.
The travel abandonment rate in the sector sits at 81%. That is the figure James puts to parks he talks to. Eight out of ten people who get as far as entering their details into a booking form do not complete the transaction. Most parks, when asked what they do with that data, say nothing. James is fairly direct: that is a very large missed opportunity, and it is one that automation can address without any of it feeling pushy. The park receptionist, often sat without much to do on a quiet afternoon, now has the data to make a gentle, helpful call.
The conversation turns to AI and guest communication, and James frames it in a way worth sitting with. Every time he has an online conversation now, he is asking himself whether he is talking to a person or a machine. His honest answer: if the response is accurate and helpful, he does not really care.
He talks through what he has seen from Runner AI, a guest communication tool working with parks in Europe. A guest asks what time they can check in. The AI checks the booking, confirms the time, tells them their unit, and asks whether they would like a bottle of champagne on arrival. If there is an early check-in slot available, it offers that too. The same conversation can handle road closure queries on the day of travel. It is not replacing the human warmth of a good park team. It is filling the gap that exists when that team is already stretched.
James also reflects on the rate at which the technology is developing. He started using ChatGPT to write property descriptions, caught it making mistakes, and now his day largely runs through it. The improvement curve has been steep and is not slowing down. His view on what happens next is honest: anyone who tells you they know exactly where AI lands in two years is guessing. But the demographic data is not speculation. By 2030, 75% of the global workforce will be Gen Z. In three to four years, half of UK travel bookings will be made by Gen Z. They have grown up digital. The question is not whether parks need to adapt for them. It is whether parks will do it fast enough.
The final section gets into philosophy, and it is where James is most comfortable. His view is clear: an all-in-one system is the round-the-world buffet. You get 800 dishes and they are all okay. He would rather go to the restaurant that does five things brilliantly.
ParcVu powered by Booking Experts is built on an open API and app store model. The approach is to stay in your lane, do the PMS function exceptionally well, and then integrate with the best available solution in every adjacent category. Connect to Airbnb and Booking.com rather than competing with them. Link to ANPR barrier systems like Cloudpath rather than building one. Work with tools like Runner AI and Guest Butler for communication rather than trying to build that capability from scratch.
He is also straightforward about the sales approach, which is consultative rather than pressure-based. If Booking Experts is not right for a park, that is fine. There are other good systems. The goal is the right fit, not the closed deal.
The episode ends where it started, really — with the Nokia 3310. James uses it regularly in presentations. You have evolved with the technology in your pocket. Your phone does things that would have seemed impossible fifteen years ago. The question he keeps putting to parks: why has the software running your business not moved at the same pace? It does not have to be a rip-and-replace. You start with the pinch points in the customer journey, fix those first, and build from there.
Connect with James on LinkedIn
james.bouldin@bookingexperts.com
Find out more
ParcVu at www.parcvu.com
Booking Experts at www.bookingexperts.com
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