Central Reservation and Sales System

The Vendor is required to provide a centralized, integrated reservation and sales system for the state park system.
- The system must provide real-time reservation, sales, financial management, customer communication, reporting, and staff operational capabilities. It must serve customers and staff through online, call center, and on-site channels, and must be accessible, secure, mobile compatible, and scalable to meet seasonal and operational demands.
- Reservation System
•    The current system, provided, allows customers to reserve campsites, shelters, cabins, and other facilities up to eleven (11) months in advance through an online portal or toll-free call center.
•    The current system:
o    Manages reservations for all campsites in the program that require a fee, including advance and same-day bookings.
o    Maintains inventory of non-reservable, no-fee sites and other sites that may not be visible to the public, in addition to reservable sites.
o    Applies detailed business rules regarding fees, occupancy, length of stay, cancellations, and modifications.
o    Collects reservation and transaction fees from customers.
o    Processes and supports WIDNR’s financial reporting and reconciliation requirements.
•    Reservations may be made by:
o    Calling a toll-free reservation line during specified service hours.
o    Using a publicly available reservation website.
o    Booking in person at park locations where staff are available.
- Recent system usage highlights the scale and intensity of peak activity:
•    Online activity: On August 6, 2024, the system recorded 120,484 web requests within the first five minutes of the booking window. Peak concurrent users reached 1,160. A total of 329 bookings were completed in the first five minutes, and 576 within the first 30 minutes.
•    Call volume: During the week ending August 27, 2024, the call center received 7,014 calls—the highest weekly total recorded that year.
•    In-person transactions: At high-demand properties, staff processed more than 1,000 in person transactions in a single day, with hourly peaks exceeding 150 transactions.
- Web and call center activity consistently spike during the release of new reservation dates, while on-site transactions peak on weekends and holidays. 
- These load patterns emphasize the need for a system that can scale to accommodate intense, short-duration demand while remaining stable and responsive during typical operations.
- Goals for the New System
•    Ensure a smooth transition and staff onboarding through clear workflows, intuitive interfaces, and effective training tools
•    Establish a collaborative, responsive vendor relationship that supports system reliability, timely updates, and evolving program needs
•    Provide a seamless and intuitive customer experience across all booking and purchasing channels
•    Increase operational efficiency and flexibility for field staff, including offline functionality where necessary
•    Enhance accessibility and mobile functionality for both customers and staff
•    Support timely, scalable, and secure operations during periods of peak seasonal demand
•    Improve the payment workflow through integration with third-party payment devices that use the state’s merchant processor, or with fully integrated vendor-supplied devices that meet payment and reconciliation requirements
•    Strengthen financial management, reconciliation, and auditability in alignment with state requirements
•    Generate output formats that meet state remittance documentation standards for deposit reporting to office
•    Improve reporting capabilities, analytics, and integration with external systems
•    Protect agency data ownership, system security, and real-time access to information for both operational and analytical use
•    Provide configurable tools that allow agency to manage inventory and policy changes with minimal vendor dependence
•    Modernize system infrastructure to adapt to changing user expectations and advances in technology over the life of the contract
•    Transition to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that reduces the state’s long-term infrastructure burden, ensures continuous vendor-supported updates, and provides scalability aligned with industry best practices.
- Implementation of a centralized, real-time platform for customer reservations, financial transactions, on-site sales, call center operations, customer communication, staff tools, and data reporting.
- System include:
•    Designing, configuring, and hosting an integrated system for reservations, permits, sales, and payments;
•    Supporting online, call center, and on-site booking workflows, including real-time availability updates;
•    Providing mobile-optimized and offline-capable staff interfaces for use in the field;
•    Enabling customer account management, communication, and self-service tools;
•    Facilitating financial reconciliation, audit trails, and reporting for agency use;
•    Ensuring compliance with accessibility, security, and data protection standards;
•    Supporting customer service and training for both agency staff and users;
•    Coordinating a full implementation process, including testing, documentation, training, and go-live readiness;
•    Providing ongoing maintenance, updates, and support throughout the contract term.
•    Supporting flexible implementation models that allow for either vendor-supplied or agency supplied hardware, and for integration with either the vendor’s or WIDNR’s payment processor.
•    Provide all necessary property, campground, facility and financial data, as well as applicable business rules to support system configuration and implementation;
•    Supply existing policies and documentation related to reservation operations, workflows, and accessibility procedures;
•    Designate internal liaisons for coordination of data delivery, testing, issue resolution, and decision-making;
•    Review and approve deliverables, communications, and change management materials in accordance with the implementation schedule;
•    Promote the approved public-facing reservation website through WIDNR’s official web and communication channels.
•    Facilitate access to field locations, equipment, and personnel as necessary to support system deployment, training, and testing activities;
•    Participate in training sessions, user acceptance testing (UAT), and other implementation milestones as mutually agreed upon;
•    Provide timely feedback and decisions to support the implementation timeline and avoid project delays;
•    Coordinate internal communications to ensure affected staff are informed of changes to reservation workflows and tools.
•    Provide essential data and documentation needed to configure and populate the system.
•    This includes property and campground attributes, PDF campground maps, financial and accounting codes, confirmed reservation data, and other relevant visitor information.
- Must maintain a documented inventory of all third-party software, open-source libraries, platforms, and infrastructure components used to support the system, including but not limited to databases, hosting environments, data warehouses, and analytics tools.

- Contract Period/Term: 4 years
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: September 17, 2025