Simba Group · Customer Story
A premium Andaman Sea operator with four brands, a 5,000 booking a year operation, and an enquiry problem that only existed after dark. Within a year, one full ops role was no longer needed and overnight enquiries were answered in seconds.
About the operator
Simba Group operates out of Boat Lagoon Marina in Phuket with four tourism and hospitality brands under one roof. Simba Sea Trips is the anchor, a premium small-group speedboat operator running day tours to Phi Phi, Maya Bay, Phang Nga Bay and Krabi, plus a private charter fleet. The defining decision is deliberate: a maximum of 18 adults per boat against an industry standard of 30 to 60. That cap is the brand.
Alongside Sea Trips sit Soho Pool Club, Two Sea Tour and Simpro Academy. Booking infrastructure runs through Bókun as the source of truth, with Hubsteer sitting above it as the conversational and operational layer through a deep custom integration rather than a generic webhook.
The challenge
Five leaks, none of them caused by a lack of demand.
Conversion
European guests message at 11pm their time, the middle of the Phuket night. A first reply at 8am means eight hours of silence and a guest who has already booked elsewhere.
8 hours of silence per enquiryOperations
Website live chat, WhatsApp Business and Facebook Messenger ran as separate notification systems. Guests experienced one conversation; the team experienced three.
Three apps, one conversationReputation
TripAdvisor, Google and GetYourGuide each had their own login, interface and response flow. Manual monitoring at nearly 6,000 reviews does not scale.
5,891 reviews monitored by handReporting
Bókun, GA4 and reseller channel data lived in separate systems. Any picture of what was actually happening required manual spreadsheet assembly.
A spreadsheet rebuilt every weekAttribution
Nothing linked conversations to bookings to review trends to revenue, so which channels actually convert could not be answered without doing it by hand.
Channel performance unknowableThe pattern you cannot unsee
"European customers generate enquiry traffic in the middle of the Phuket night. The difference between a first reply in two minutes and a first reply at 8am the next morning is the difference between booking us and booking a competitor. Once you see that pattern clearly, you cannot unsee it."
The solution
Paul found Hubsteer through the Bókun ecosystem, specifically because of the depth of the integration. Most tools connect at a generic webhook level; this one treats the booking system as the record at the centre.
Customer Support
Website live chat, WhatsApp and Messenger merged into one conversation view with round-the-clock first touch on top. Overnight enquiries from Europe, previously losing eight hours to time-zone silence, are now engaged within seconds. The team reviews the daily log and handles anything that needs a human.
"Customers do not think in channels, they message wherever feels easiest. After a single view, it is hard to imagine going back."
Marketing
TripAdvisor, Google and GetYourGuide monitoring aggregated into one view, replacing the three-login cycle. Google reviews are answered directly, and cross-platform themes surface across 5,891 reviews that would be invisible reading each platform in isolation.
"Being able to see cross-platform trends is a different kind of insight than just responding to individual reviews."
SmartGM
Conversation pipeline, review trend and sales activity in one dashboard that no individual tool in the existing stack could produce. Before this, joining Bókun, GA4 and reseller data into an operational picture meant manual spreadsheet work every time.
"It is the joining layer above the existing stack, making the operational view legible in a way no underlying tool can."
The results
"Having a dashboard that crosses chat, reviews, sales, analytics, profitability and CRM in a single view gives you the kind of bird's-eye picture that historically only a much larger company could produce."
In their words
"Joining the dots. As a tour operator at any scale beyond a single boat, you sit at the intersection of so many systems that nothing in the stack ties them together. This is the first product I have seen trying to be that joining layer for our segment."
"Treat it as infrastructure, not a widget. The depth and value of the platform scales directly with how thoughtfully you set it up, and the team will support you through that configuration."
"Critical errors, configuration questions, someone is back with a response that is both fast and substantive. That level of founder-led customer service is genuinely rare."
"Medium to large operators with multi-channel customer contact, an existing booking system and an active review presence. Operators willing to invest configuration time up front get far more value than those treating it as plug and play."
Paul Chappell · Owner and Operator, Simba Group
More Operators, Real Results
Three brands. Sixty-nine staff. Thirty-eight hours saved every week.