Four brands. Twenty years. One headcount structurally retired.
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.
- 1 FTE
- Role structurally retired
- Seconds
- Overnight first response
- 5,891
- Reviews in one view
Inside Simba Group
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.
- Operator
- Simba GroupSea Trips, Soho, Two Sea, Simpro
- Founded
- 2005Paul joined as owner-manager in 2017
- Headcount
- ~50 staff35 permanent plus 15 contractors
- Bookings / yr
- ~5,000Around 12,000 passengers
- Boat capacity
- Max 18 adultsAgainst a 30 to 60 industry norm
- Booking stack
- BókunDeep custom API integration
Good business. Disconnected systems.
Five leaks, none of them caused by a lack of demand.
- 01Conversion
The overnight enquiry gap
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 enquiry
- 02Operations
Three chat inboxes, no single view
Website live chat, WhatsApp Business and Facebook Messenger ran as separate notification systems. Guests experienced one conversation; the team experienced three.
Three apps, one conversation
- 03Reputation
Three review platforms, three logins
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 hand
- 04Reporting
No joined-up operational view
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 week
- 05Attribution
Conversations disconnected from bookings
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 unknowable
Eight hours of silence, every single night.
"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."
- 8 hrs
- Between EU-night enquiry and Phuket-morning reply
- UTC+7
- Structural mismatch with a European customer base
- ~12,000
- Annual passengers, mostly inbound international
The staff they hired, and what each one took over
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.
Unified chat with 24/7 first touch
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."
Reviews across every platform
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."
A booking-connected operational view
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."
What changed, in numbers
"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."
What Paul tells other operators
On the single biggest improvement
"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."
Advice for new customers
"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."
On onboarding and support
"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."
On which operators benefit most
"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."
Keep reading
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- Seats that went out empty in the last 90 days, by product and departure
- Where your weekday demand actually sits versus where you're pricing it
- How far out guests book, so you know when a seat is really lost
- Which of the five leaks is costing you the most bookings