Supplier Member of the Month

Supplier Member of the Month allows one CFA Supplier member per month to highlight their business.

Reservation software for the ferry industry

From booking a trip right through to arrival at the final destination, every ferry journey is influenced by the ferry company’s reservation system. BOOKIT is an advanced ticketing and reservation solution that is designed to make ferry travel – regardless of whether it´s tourism, commuter or freight – as efficient and seamless as possible.

Hogia BOOKIT consists of several applications all built on the same platform and using common software components to provide a consistent user experience. All data is stored in the same physical database to allow data sharing between applications.

The booking system is modular and scalable, so you only pay for functionality that you need. This is achieved by having separate applications for different purposes and by making the system highly configurable.

Strong Canadian presence

We have been supplying our standard reservation system to the Canadian ferry industry for close to 20 years now. The first company to join our BOOKIT family in Canada was Bay Ferries and Northumberland Ferries in 2004. After that more have followed and today we are proud to say that we have 6 ferry lines using BOOKIT.

Apart from working with Canadian customers we have also actively supported CFA for many years.

Bay Ferries, Northumberland Ferries and the CAT

Bay Ferries, Northumberland Ferries and the CAT are three ferry operations with different offerings. These operations are however using one single reservation system - BOOKIT. The flexibility BOOKIT offers, with its wide portfolio of standard functionality, makes it possible to cater for all their needs.

The BOOKIT API is used to build web booking pages for all three operations - click here to visit their web site, built by our partner Verb Interactive (https://www.ferries.ca/) (https://www.verbinteractive.com/)

Marine Atlantic

Marine Atlantic has been using BOOKIT since 2007 and they are also using our sister company Hogia Terminal Systems’ terminal operating system. The two systems are seamlessly integrated which make the booking, gate-in and loading process more efficient and user friendly.

The BOOKIT API is used to build web booking pages - click here to visit their web site, built by Verb Interactive. (https://www.marineatlantic.ca/) (https://www.verbinteractive.com/)

CTMA Traversier

CTMA Traversier is a new BOOKIT customer and have been using BOOKIT for a few months. With a new vessel on its way, they wanted a modern and reliable system that offers tools to even more enhance their customers booking experience.

The BOOKIT API is used to build web booking pages - click here to visit their web site, also built by Verb Interactive. (https://traversierctma.ca/en) (https://www.verbinteractive.com/)

Owen Sound Transportation Company (OSTC)

OSTC, also known as Ontario Ferries, is one of our newer customers and started taking live bookings in March 2021 and are going live with check-in the coming weeks. They are using BOOKIT for all parts of their operations, including the flight service they offer during the winter to Pelee island.

The BOOKIT API is used to build web booking pages - click here to visit their web site, built by JIC Design. (https://www.ontarioferries.com/) (https://www.jicdesign.com/)

Would BOOKIT be a good fit for your operations?

BOOKIT is a reservation system focused on ferry travel. It handles the complete booking process from the capture of passenger, vehicle and freight details to follow-up activities such as invoicing and reporting. The system is suitable for many different kinds of ferry operations, thanks to its flexible route, capacity, price and yield management functionality. It is also possible to sell closely related products through BOOKIT, such as onboard services, accommodation and connecting travel tickets.

Today BOOKIT is being used by ferry operators on all continents of the world (apart from Antarctica) and our customers’ operations are ranging from hi-speed passenger only services to RoRo only services. And all is done within the same standard system. The vast majority of our customers are RoPax operators with a mix of passengers, vehicles and freight.

The BOOKIT product portfolio is extensive, it has to be as we support so many different types of operations. But as BOOKIT is very scalable, it will always feel like it’s tailored for your operations.

API - Application Programming Interface

There is one area of BOOKIT and our standard product that we are particularly proud of and that is our API. In todays’ world we believe our aim should be to be experts at what we do – developing a reservation system – and leave CRM systems, finance systems, web development, BI tools, hardware supply etc. to the experts in those fields. Our standard BOOKIT API allows our customers to integrate to those 3rd party systems.

By developing BOOKIT to be a world class system, and by make all the functionality accessible via APIs, it allows you the operators to choose best of practice for all of your additional software hardware and needs.

Today our API is used for a number of different things; web booking sites, self-service ticketing kiosks, handheld check-in applications to name just a few.

Reporting

Data is knowledge and the reservation system holds vital information that you as a ferry operator need to get your hands on in order to analyze, report and forecast. BOOKIT holds a set of standard reports; different types of manifests, finance reports etc. But these are static reports that hold current up to date information that is crucial for your daily operations.

For ad-hoc reports or more in-depth analysis reports we offer the standard Reporting views. With these Reporting views we give you the tool to create your own custom reports and with real time data. The reporting views can be used as is or you can choose to use a Business Intelligence tool, for instance Microsoft Power BI.

Who we are

We are Hogia Ferry Systems from Vasa, Finland, and we are part of the Swedish software company the Hogia group. We have been developing and implementing our standard reservation system BOOKIT since the mid-80s.

We take great pride in what we do and make sure that our relationship with our customers is more than a customer/supplier relationship - we are long-term partners. Our customers and partners, together with us, form the BOOKIT Community, a community where all members can freely discuss and share ideas. We are scattered all over the world, but we are all within the same ferry industry.

If you want to know more about BOOKIT, please reach out to our Sales team (contact details below) or visit our web site: www.hogiaferrysystems.com

You can also follow us on social media where we share stories and pictures about us but mostly about our customers and partners.

Contact Information:

Twitter - @BookitHogia (https://twitter.com/BookitHogia)
Instagram - FerryExciting (https://www.instagram.com/ferryexciting)
Website: www.hogiaferrysystems.com

Niclas Blomström