The success story of De Speelfabriek
‘Accessible, practical, and cost-effective: that’s Recras’
At De Speelfabriek (The Play-factory) in Rotterdam, visitors can enjoy a creative playground with various activities, such as drawing like a sand wizard, building with mini bricks, making milkshakes, and experimenting with electricity. Owner Maarten Horstink calls the concept an “invention playground” with endless possibilities. The company has been using Recras as their booking system for a year now.
Indoor playground
De Speelfabriek is similar to an indoor playground where children can play, but with a unique twist. During their visit, children can build things themselves and take their creations home at the end of the day. In addition, De Speelfabriek also organizes children’s parties and school trips. Many schools want to offer technical education but often lack sufficient space at their own location. At De Speelfabriek, children can learn in a hands-on way.
Externally managed
“The most popular activities include building race cars, sailing with homemade sailboats, and making soap,” Maarten lists. “Until last year, we used a WordPress plugin for booking activities and invoicing, but it had some downsides. We wanted to eliminate the risk of losing all our bookings and booking data in case of an issue with our website. In the end, we even went live with Recras one week earlier because our old site was indeed hacked!”
Affordable solution
During the search for a suitable alternative booking system, Recras stood out due to their pricing. Maarten: “Many booking systems base their prices on the number of tickets sold. In contrast, Recras calculates their rate based on a pleasant percentage of the total revenue. This is an affordable solution for us.”
Transparent company
“What I particularly appreciate about Recras is that it’s such a practical system. It does what it needs to do and provides a seamless connection between the back-end and the front-end. As soon as a booking is made, our staff has immediate insight into what needs to be done and when. No unnecessary bells and whistles. This applies not only to the technical side of the system but also to the team behind it. The contact with Hilko and Marthijn from Recras is very pleasant. You can tell it’s a transparent company. Moreover, they are always reachable, and the fact that they are based in the Netherlands gives a sense of trust.”
Day and night
“For example, Recras has an emergency number that is available day and night. Once, we had to adjust the number of available tickets for a specific day due to a technical issue, so we called the emergency number. We were immediately connected to someone who understood the problem and resolved it quickly, allowing us to continue our daily operations. That was very helpful!”
Potential expansion
“I would summarize Recras as an accessible, practical, and cost-effective system. Currently, we only use it as a booking system and not yet as full management software, because our business is still relatively small. However, if we expand in the future, we will definitely consider using Recras as a complete option!”
Online in 5 steps
- Enter products and packages
- Add starting times and material
- Link with our payment provider Mollie
- Create a workflow to follow up bookings
- Embed the booking module on your website