No problems for Nap as demand for camping booms in Japan

Challenge

However, with camping experiencing a boom in Japan, camping site management organizations like Nap have also experienced added challenges. Every first of the month at precisely midnight, Nap opens up camp site bookings for three months ahead. That resulted in sudden traffic spikes to their site and subsequent downtime as visitors vie for a spot. Initially, they tried to solve the problem by increasing server capacity horizontally, but this proved to be a limited.

When their system went down on the first of June, they knew they needed to find another way to maintain site performance and immediately started looking for a solution to prepare for the next set of bookings on July 1^st.

"Other solutions required that we make changes to our ready-made system, which we found difficult to achieve within one month. Virtual waiting rooms were able to meet our needs."

System Development Engineer, Nap

Solution

With just a month until bookings re-opened, Nap needed a solution that could be integrated quickly. A virtual waiting room gave them an easy way to control traffic inflow and provide a smoother online user experience along the way.

Queue-it’s solution ended up standing out from the crowd. Integrating Queue-it into their infrastructure didn’t involve changing their existing system, which allowed for a quick and effective implementation that fit the short timeline. Functionality was another important part of the waiting room, and Nap had the flexibility to customize the waiting room page and place it wherever they needed on their site. Most importantly, Queue-it provided a way to mitigate the burden on their infrastructure while effectively allowing users to book their camp sites.

Initially, there was a learning curve in setting up the solution and technical challenges Nap had not first anticipated. However, after three technical integration sessions and close support in Japanese from the Queue-it team, Nap was ready for their next set of bookings.

"One of the reasons we chose Queue-it’s solution from among many other virtual waiting room providers companies was its substantial support. We could find hardly any other company which provided support in Japanese, so that was very helpful."

System Development Engineer, Nap

Results

With close support from the Queue-it team, Nap integrated the waiting room solution in time for camping site bookings on July 1^st. Using Queue-it proved to be a cost-effective solution for their infrastructure in place of increasing server capacity, which can be a technically complicated and expensive process.  Although virtual waiting rooms are still not well-known in Japan, the response to the new booking experience was generally positive.

Additionally, there’s room for Queue-it and Nap’s collaboration to grow. Nap’s foremost priority was integrating the waiting room to protect their website this time, but for future events, they hope to explore how they could utilize the virtual waiting room in more effective ways.

"Regulating outflow per session significantly mitigated the burden on our infrastructure. In the long run, I think this will reduce the cost to maintain our infrastructure. We used to endlessly add servers, but with Queue-it, we will be able to enhance servers in a more planned and efficient way."

System Development Engineer, Nap

About Nap

Nap is the largest campsite search and reservation organization in Japan, listing approximately 4,300 camping sites across the country. These sites range from do-it-yourself locales to fancier “glamping” (glamorous camping) spots.