Executive summary
Haven is the UK’s leading holiday park business and owns and operates 39 award-winning holiday parks across England, Scotland and Wales.
Managing a high volume of bookings and delivering an excellent customer experience requires reliable digital solutions. These include a customer service website and a mobile app where guests can book their holidays and order services before and during their stay, as well as an internal workforce app for employees that enables park staff to assist guests on the go.
Helmes Lithuania (previously TeleSoftas) has been a trusted digital partner for Haven since 2020, helping the company solve their digital challenges. Following an extended team model, our engineers work as part of Haven’s product teams covering guest experience, cloud and infrastructure, and data solutions.
By combining our IT expertise with Haven’s hospitality industry knowledge, we can build more efficient and reliable solutions together. We see ourselves as the client’s co-pilot, helping them to identify and implement the best solutions to their digitalization challenges.
The client
Meet the customer
Haven is one of the biggest names in the UK hospitality market, operating 39 holiday parks across England, Scotland and Wales. Each park accommodates up to 2000 caravans of different grades, along with other facilities such as restaurants, swimming pools, and leisure areas catering to guests’ diverse needs.
Digital solutions play a critical role in ensuring the best user experience, from booking to the smooth on-site service management. Helmes Lithuania (previously TeleSoftas) has been an IT and digitalisation partner for Haven since 2020, helping the company achieve its digital transformation goals.
The challenge
The collaboration started in 2020, when, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Haven, like many others, began upgrading their digital solutions to assist guests remotely and offer more digital self-service options.
Haven initially turned to Helmes for our expertise in Flutter mobile app development, which was a relatively new technology in 2020. Impressed with our work, the collaboration quickly expanded to other projects.
Since then, we have contributed a broad range of technical expertise across mobile and web development, cloud and infrastructure, data and AI projects, also providing consulting and coaching when needed.
We have become a trusted IT partner for Haven, helping to solve whatever digitalization challenges they are facing – from architectural optimization to smaller projects like illustrating an interactive park map.
The solution
Helmes team members work as an extension of Haven’s in-house development team in UK.
Haven follows the Spotify work model, with a separate product team for each product. Currently, we have more than 20 Helmes experts working in different product teams across three key departments: guest experience, cloud and infrastructure, and data solutions. This case study covers our collaboration in guest experience and cloud and infrastructure, while our work in data solutions will be explored in a separate case study.
Guest experience
Haven leverages a range of digital solutions to provide excellent guest experience to their customers before and during their stay. Helmes has contributed to the development of all major systems, including customer service and internal workforce apps:
- Mobile app and website: Guests can easily book their holiday in the mobile app or website, selecting accommodation and other facilities, from swimming pools to mini golf. They can also choose the perfect caravan directly on the park map at the time of booking – whereas before, caravans were assigned upon arrival.
- On-site service ordering: During their stay, guests can conveniently order services digitally, such as booking a table or activity in the park. They can use the scan & order feature in cafes and restaurants to place orders, tip staff, or request room service delivery to their caravan.
- Employee app: Staff use a dedicated internal workforce app on hand-held devices, enabling them to assist guests quickly and efficiently throughout their stay. Recent enhancements include digital acceptance-of-risk agreements, which guests can now sign in the app instead of paper, and automatic number plate recognition for smoother guest parking. Additionally, we have recently added an internal system for employee discounts in Haven parks.
Cloud infrastructure
Helmes engineers have provided critical expertise to several cloud and infrastructure projects that improved the reliability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency of key IT systems.
For instance, we helped the client implement a unified solution for Streamlit app deployment, utilizing Github and Snowflake.
In another project, we helped devise the architectural approach and implement the new infrastructure and services setup for the data team. This allowed the company to adopt best practices and unified standards within the whole IT team, considerably simplifying the process of data development.
A few examples
The benefits
Helmes engineers work as a joint team with the Haven in-house team in the UK, contributing their experience and expertise toward shared goals. There is no distinction between the team members of the two companies: our experts’ contributions and ideas are always welcomed and highly appreciated.
The strong partnership and team spirit benefit from regular in-person meetings. Our engineers visit Haven’s parks at least a few times a year, where they conduct on-site workshops with their UK colleagues. During park visits, our engineers step into the guest experience and can test the software they have designed and developed in real-world conditions. Occasionally, we also host the Haven team members in Helmes offices in Lithuania to ensure our joint teams work smoothly & efficiently.
During our five years of collaboration, we have contributed very different competencies to a wide range of diverse projects.
Our most experienced engineers have also become valuable team members and IT partners for Haven in UK, regularly visiting the company to help coach their staff and share best practices. This has allowed us to extend our impact beyond merely providing development services to supporting the whole IT team’s growth.
We see ourselves as Haven’s co-pilot: their team understands their industry inside and out, while we contribute strong expertise in software development. By combining these strengths, we can reach their goals effectively.
Work with us
A long-term partnership with a trusted IT partner can set your company on a new growth trajectory, allowing you to accomplish ambitious digitalization goals faster and smarter.
Helmes has more than 30 years of experience providing custom development services to clients in Europe and beyond. Our clients include leading telecom operators, banks, insurance, retail and mobility companies, healthcare providers, and government institutions.
If you are looking for a digitalization partner for your company in the UK or beyond, we would like to hear from you.
Picture on the left: our Haven team
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