Product Development

Basic Setup

Lighthouse has administration of basic entities like ports, routes, ferries, vehicle types, destinations, etc.

Departures

Each departure uses a collection of configurations. It is very easy for a business user to create and update multiple departures.

Car Decks

Car decks can be set up with several parameters. You can handle the dimension of lanes, capacity restrictions for different vehicle categories, dangerous goods restrictions, the number of electric plugs, wide load conversion factors, etc.

Passengers

Setting up passenger groups with different customer categories, like child and adult, is very easy. You can connect it with market specific base prices.

Cabins

The cabins are set up with total berths and total capacity per category. Each category contains any number of cabins that all have a deck number, section, and a cabin number. There is also an option to set up an article where a customer can pay extra to choose a specific cabin.

Restaurants

Each restaurant has any number of sittings and meals. Capacity can be set on either one or both. Meals are bookable by customers and can be set with or without price depending on the type of restaurant.

Seats

In the seat configuration, there is administration of decks, seat categories, and seat numbers. There is also an option to set up an article where a customer can pay extra to choose a specific seat.

Lounges

The lounges have a simple setup. Just a few properties are needed. Each lounge has capacity and prices.

Transfers

A transfer is connected to a port and is set up with a booking period. The transfer is bookable on each departure that matches. Choose if it is arriving or departing from the port and which weekdays its timetable is active. Timetables are based on transfer stops with a set distance in time from port. This generates a timetable automatically.

Onboard Extras

In the onboard extra configuration, there is administration of onboard extras like entrance to movies, parking, etc.

Markets

Multiple markets with various currencies and languages are supported as standard. This feature also enables you to customise the appearance and feel of the booking dialogue to adapt it for a specific customer base.

Cancellation Fees

Cancellation fees could be set up with fixed fees and percentage fees depending on how long before departure a reservation is cancelled.

Insurances

Lighthouse includes functionality for travel insurance and cancellation insurance. Insurances could be either in-house products or products from an external provider. The price of insurances could either be fixed or based on the booking value. The price of the insurance can have an administration fee part that will not be refunded when the insurance is used.

Packages

Set up packages to dynamically get prepopulated offers to customers. Examples of products that can be included in a package are passenger tickets, vehicles, cabins, meals, transfers, priority boarding, etc.

Offer Codes

An offer code will give the customer a discount. Offer codes can be specified by route, vehicle type, departure date, departure time, etc.

Users and Roles

Flexible user access management. Manage who should have access to different functions in the Backoffice application.

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Purchasing

Destination Addons

It is easy to set up negotiated contracts for addons like entrance tickets, excursions, etc. A contract will have all negotiated figures like purchase price, deposit fees, commission, etc. The contracts will be used when calculating the price for the end customer.

Hotels

It is easy to set up hotels by adding your negotiated hotel contracts directly into the system. In the hotel contract, rules like age restrictions for extra beds, supplements, max number of persons, etc., are entered. The contracts will be used to present and make hotels bookable. All rules set up in the contract will also be validated during the booking process.

Pricing & Capacity

Pricing

The pricing model in Lighthouse is both simple and flexible. Prices can be changed at any time while previously confirmed and ongoing bookings are left untouched.

Exchange Rates

Prices can either be administered in multiple currencies or administered in a single currency and automatically converted to the currency of the end user. The system also supports hedged currencies where you can have different exchange rates for different travel periods.

Allotment

Allotment in Lighthouse is guaranteed as soon as a booking is confirmed.

Cabin Allocation

Cabin allocation is done when a booking with cabins is confirmed. If needed by the ferry operator, a separate process can run at a predetermined time before departure to optimize the cabin allocation regarding cleaning, etc.

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Marketing

Travel Customers

For travel customers, only basic data is stored in Lighthouse. A customer can log in and get a list of all their current and past bookings.

Freight Customers

For freight customers, Lighthouse will store customer details that will be used in other parts of the system. Here are some of the freight customer information that is stored in Lighthouse • Customer name and id • Parent customer id (if a customer belongs to a group) • Contact details of persons, may be multiple e.g. traffic leader, purchaser etc. • Addresses • Preferred language • Credit or cash • Payment terms and credit limits • Optional agent details • Configurable notification interval. Email of shipped units either once a day or for each departure • Reference number validation rules • Additional bookings allowed (above the block bookings) or not • What to pay for and not, e.g. food, shop articles, cabin • Additional services like taking trailers on-board • Other specific optionsShould a ferry operator have a separate CRM system, then some of the things above may be imported or collected from that system. Export from Lighthouse would have to be set up for statistical purposes.

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Sales

Freight Agreements

Freight agreements will be used for major customers with whom the ferry operator has a special negotiated deal. Yearly negotiation per customer specified on departure level per vehicle category with the following terms: • Price agreement including invoicing period and terms • Preliminary volumes • Volume bonus • Product setup, e.g. food • Parent customer can have a configurable commission for sales of sub customers • Guaranteed allotment per route, date period, departure time • Minimum usage of allotment per route, date period, departure timeOnce the contract is signed, the details can be registered in the system and the actual contract scanned and stored. Lighthouse will recognize if the customer is on a contract that is valid and use the factors in the booking process. Contracted customers will create bookings based on their agreement throughout the year. Such bookings will be settled against the agreement. There is also an option of putting in single bookings, both for contract customers and others.

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Booking Consumer

Responsive Design

Built using Responsive Web Design to work on all devices, from mobile phones to desktop computer monitors.

Multilingual Booking Dialog

All texts and descriptions in the system that are shown to the end user are easy to translate to local languages.

My Pages

From "My Pages," a customer can retrieve all bookings. By choosing a booking, the customer can change the booking, cancel, or check-in.

Packaging

Support to dynamically set up and sell products like transports, mini-cruises, day trips, and hotel packages.

Onboard Resources

Onboard resources like cabins, meals, lounges, etc., have support for media like images and videos.

Additional Sales

Lighthouse has support for additional services like cancellation insurances (external provider or internal), travel insurances, choose specific cabin number, WiFi, guaranteed seat, etc.

PDF Tickets

It is very easy to create and maintain the design of PDF-documents like the ticket that is included in the reservation confirmation email.

Multileg

Lighthouse can handle bookings with up to six legs. This powerful feature enables customers to plan, book, and pay for trips spanning multiple destinations.

Agent Booking

Agent booking is supported from online travel agents or gateway providers using the industry standard FerryGateway protocol.

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Booking Callcenter

Create Bookings

The extended functionality in this dialogue offers the Call Centre staff great features for creating and changing bookings. Staff could handle bookings for different markets, different packages, and add all products that an end customer can add with the customer booking application.

Search

Find any booking with ease by searching on name, vehicle registration number, phone numbers, email, route, date, etc.

Adjust Prices

Call Centre users with the right functional authority can adjust prices.

Price Proposals

Send a price proposal at any stage in the booking process and just continue with it as a "real" booking when the customer accepts the proposal.

Events

As a customer adds or removes items from the cart and moves through the various booking steps, all changes are recorded into the Lighthouse event log. Our detailed log shows every change of a booking at any given point in time, making it easier to track down issues and to better understand your customers. Examples of events are "Traveler details added", "Proposal selected", "Reservation Confirmed", "Confirmation email sent" etc.

GDPR

There is support in the system to automatically get a report of sensitive customer data and also clean that data from the system if the customer so wishes.

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Payment

Card & Direct Bank Payment

Lighthouse integrates with your payment provider for card payments. In the test environments for Lighthouse, there is integration with Nets or Adyen.

Invoicing

Lighthouse has support for invoicing. Freight customers and travel agents are invoiced using already predefined contracts and agreements.

Check In

Checkin

Configurable online check-in. Customers can check in online or at a service desk of their choice. Allowed timespans are configured per route in the system. It is prepared to integrate with kiosks where most foot passengers can check in themselves.

Boarding

With a user-friendly boarding user interface, passengers and vehicles will be boarded with ease using scanning or manual data entry. It is easy to integrate with hardware to read vehicle number plates (ANPR device).

Passport Scanning

Lighthouse has full support for routes that need to gather passport information. Passports can either be scanned or manually entered.

Passenger List

Lighthouse has built-in functionality to send passenger lists via API, Secure FTP (SFTP), or Mail.

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