London Duck Tours

London Duck Tours offer more than just a sightseeing tour – it’s an exciting road and river adventure appealing to visitors of all ages.

The name Duck Tours is drawn from the vehicles themselves as they are the actual amphibious DUKWs which were used to taking the troops ashore for the D-Day landings at the end of World
War II. The ducks are a very important part of British history.

Offering a unique and exciting experience of London, the ducks are able to pick up and drop off from different locations and can tailor make routes to suit different requirements. As well as having the ability to drive from the road straight into the Thames, each vehicle has been modified to include a public address system to provide fascinating facts about the vehicles themselves.

London Duck Tours were feeling the impact of rapidly expanding passenger numbers and therefore felt that they needed an up-rated payment system to take both the Internet payments as well as those customers who walked in to book a tour.

The system that was in place could not track the extensive levels of information that went along side each booking. They felt that to manage the day to day cash and credit control an all encompassing system was needed that could also handle the fast track approach that customers demanded.

Added to this was required a high degree of control for the audit trail that also needed to dovetail into the e-commerce booking system that Duck Tours had heavily invested in. Following significant market research London Duck Tours invited ECR to develop the existing Touch soft system to be adapted to manage ticket sales.

Following a recent extensive refurbishment program, London Duck Tours realised the necessity of updating their current ticket issuing system, to cope with ever-increasing ticket sales. After comparing different systems available on the market, London Duck Tours chose ECR to install a system to cope with the demand.

The new ECR Touch screen was installed in Spring 2006, and not only modernised the way their staff processed tickets but also bought their administration into the 21st Century. The existing levels of Internet booking had increased dramatically and footfall of the street had increased.

The link between the all important booking details and the cash banking had become difficult to manage. The electronic audit trail provided by ECR was hugely important in enabling management to data mine for both financial and marketing purposes.

London Duck Tours were particularly keen to install a Chip and Pin system and asked ECR to come up with a solution which suited both the online and customer present scenario.

They were delighted that after considering all factors of the new system being installed, ECR’s solution provided them highly secure, swift payment processing at point of sale. The
fast and simple EPoS integration was exactly what London Duck Tours required.

The link into the web sales meant that for the first time analysis could be made for both load management as well as ROI on the expensive vehicles. In addition the company could also analyse
the staffing levels in both head office and on board the DUKW’s. This led to a significant increase in productivity.

Having used the system now for over three years John Bigos and his team are clear that the ECR system has improved many different areas of the business. The company is now going from strength to strength wit the opportunity of opening an operation in Paris.

“ The ECR system has made our procedures and administration so much smoother so that we can concentrate on the business of making our customers happy.”

John Bigos – Managing Director