Grotto Hub
Every add-on a parent buys puts margin in your pocket
You set the price. We do the rest.
Christmas grottos make most of their money in six weeks. The booking itself caps out: you can only sell as many tickets as you have slots, and you’ve probably already optimised that. So how do you grow revenue without adding chairs?
Upsells. Specifically, the kind that parents want to buy because they make the visit more personal, but that take real work to produce. Designing letterheads. Setting up SMS systems. Managing fulfilment. Most operators don’t have time.
What we offer
A turn-key catalogue of platform add-ons you can offer alongside your tickets:
- Personalised Santa Letter. Posted to the child’s address with their name, their visit date, and a personal note from you.
- Call from Santa. A scheduled phone call with a script that references their name, the visit date, and a parent-supplied detail such as a favourite toy or recent achievement.
- Personalised Santa Invite. A postcard that lands a week before, with the visit time and a “I can’t wait to see you”.
- SMS reminders. Branded text reminders 24h and 1h before the visit, cutting your no-show rate.
Each one is a tiny extra in the basket. Several of them on the same booking adds up fast.
A real revenue example
These are example figures based on a 500-visit grotto and average conversion rates – your results will vary based on footfall and the prices you set.
| Add-on | Take-up | Cost Price | Retail Price | Profit per sale | Annual profit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Letter | 30% (150 sales) | £5.00 | £8.00 | £3.00 | £450 |
| Call from Santa | 15% (75 sales) | £0.75 | £1.20 | £0.45 | £34 |
| SMS Reminders | 50% (250 sales) | £0.50 | £0.80 | £0.30 | £75 |
| Total | £559 |
The Santa Letter is fully managed and fulfilled – postage, printing, everything included in that £5 cost price. There’s nothing for you to do beyond switching it on.
You can adjust the customer-facing price at any time. The higher you set it, the more you make per sale.
1. REST API (best for live integrations)
You don’t need to change your booking system. Pick whichever of these fits your setup.
If you’ve got a developer, give them our API endpoint. Each booking they create in your system pushes a row to us in one HTTP request. We respond in milliseconds with the SantaBooker reference, and the add-on goes straight into our fulfilment queue.
Re-sending the same booking is harmless. We deduplicate automatically.
2. CSV upload (best for batch)
If you’d rather batch yesterday’s bookings up and upload them once a day, you can do it from the GrottoHub admin in your browser. Download a one-page template, fill it in, drop the file into the uploader. Same fulfilment, less wiring.
3. Email a CSV (best for the lowest-tech setup)
Same CSV format, but you email it as an attachment to a dedicated inbox address we’ll give you. Useful if your booking system can already export a daily CSV: set up an auto-forward and we take care of the rest. You’ll get an automated reply confirming how many bookings we processed and flagging anything that needs attention.
Benefits at a glance
- No change to your customer journey. They book through your existing system; the add-ons appear on their confirmation.
- You set the customer price. We recommend a sensible range, you charge what your market bears.
- Pay only on what sells. There’s no platform fee or monthly subscription. Our cut comes off each add-on that actually goes out.
- Full fulfilment included. Letters printed and posted, calls scheduled and made, SMS delivered.
- Idempotent and audited. Re-sending the same booking is safe; every add-on is logged with a state timeline so you can see exactly what was sent, when, to whom.
- Per-add-on customisation. If the family supplies a personal note or a favourite toy, that data flows straight through to the letter or the call script.
How fulfilment works behind the scenes
Once your booking and its add-on lands in GrottoHub it enters our Platform Orders pipeline:
- New. We’ve received it and it’s queued for processing.
- In progress. Production has started (letter printed, call scheduled).
- Dispatched. Letter posted, SMS scheduled, call diarised.
- Delivered. Confirmed at the family’s end.
You can see each order’s state at any time from your GrottoHub dashboard, and the system automatically emails the customer at the right milestones so you’re never the one chasing.
Ready to add this stream to your grotto?
Email [email protected] with:
- Your grotto’s name
- Approximate annual visit volume
- Which add-ons you’re interested in offering
You’ll get a reply with pricing, an API key for testing, and a 15-minute onboarding call if you want one. No commitment, no pressure: just a clearer picture of how much extra revenue you could be banking this season.
No tech team? No problem. The CSV and email options need nothing more than a spreadsheet and a working “send” button.
No. That’s the point. You keep your existing booking system; we just need the basic booking data (parent contact, child name, visit date) and which add-ons they bought.
Nothing. There’s no setup fee, no subscription, no minimum volume. We make our margin on each add-on that goes out, you keep the difference between your customer price and our cost.
A few minutes for a CSV or email integration. A morning for a proper API integration if your developer is comfortable with HTTP. You’ll have a test API key on the same day you sign up.
You handle the customer-facing refund through your normal process. Tell us within 24 hours of the visit and we won’t bill you for that add-on.
Yes. The GrottoHub dashboard shows every order, its current state, and the full timeline of state changes (with timestamps and delivery confirmations).
All transport is TLS. All data at rest is encrypted. We hold the minimum needed to fulfil the add-on. Never card details, never anything beyond what you send us.