Shandy Swenson runs River Events and Rentals, a riverfront glamping site near Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The idea came naturally. She explains, “It started because my parents purchased a unique river front property… My mom always had tipis when I was growing up. She now has 5 tipis on this amazing property and we thought, why not start a glamping site!” Today, the site welcomes up to 15 guests at a time, offering a mix of nature, comfort, and tipi experiences.
Her customers are mainly outdoorsy people who enjoy camping but want something different. Alongside glamping, she offers special event décor rentals once the season is over. Running the business, however, wasn’t easy at first. “I used Excel,” Shandy explains, which left her struggling with “getting organized, broadcasting my available products, and pricing.”
That’s when she decided to look for tent rental software that could keep her orders in one place, avoid errors, and give her an event rental website to display her products. Switching to Booqable gave her the tools to save time, stay organized, reduce errors, and boost bookings while creating a professional experience for her guests.
Having products and orders tracked for you
Like many small rental businesses, River Events and Rentals first tried to manage everything in spreadsheets. But it meant hours of work and too much risk of double booking. Booqable’s inventory and order management tools solved this problem. Shandy now sees every booking in one place, with availability updated instantly when someone places an online order. As she puts it, “I now have all three built in as one system in the software.”
Here’s how it works: when an order is placed online, products are automatically reserved thanks to live availability. The booking is then scheduled on the dashboard, where every detail is visible. Digital order statuses keep everything organized from start to finish, so there’s no need to search through Excel or worry about losing data.
For River Events and Rentals, this means:
-
Less time spent entering data manually
-
Preventing double bookings thanks to live availability
-
Easier organization with every order stored in one system
Instead of long nights working in spreadsheets, Shandy can trust her tent rental software to handle the details. The practical benefit is clear: she finally solved the pain point of staying organized and can focus more on welcoming her guests.
Utilizing the Booqable website builder and templates
Another challenge was making her products visible online. “Now that I have a webpage, people are able to view my products easier,” she shares. With Booqable’s rental website builder and event rental templates, River Events and Rentals was able to get a professional tent rental website up and running without needing to hire a designer.
Shandy selected a premade event rental template from over 50 options available in Booqable’s website builder, spanning different industries. The ready-made layout saved hours of work and gave her a design foundation proven to work for rental businesses. She could then customize it by choosing fonts, colors, and rearranging elements so the website reflected her own style.
This balance between prebuilt structure and flexible editing gave her the best of both worlds: a professional layout that required little effort but still felt personal to River Events and Rentals.
This achieves:
-
A website built around event rental software, without needing outside tools
-
Clear product pages for glamping stays and décor rentals
-
Up-to-date availability that reflects her inventory automatically
-
A customizable look with fonts, colors, and layout options
The benefit is simple. What once felt like a big challenge, “broadcasting my available products and pricing,” is now solved. River Events and Rentals’ tent rental website is a central hub where guests can discover and book services anytime.
Collecting the right details at checkout
Shandy also needed a way to collect important information from her guests. With only two people on the team, she couldn’t spend time chasing details by email. Booqable’s custom checkout fields let her add the questions that matter most, directly from her settings. The fields then feed automatically into each order’s page so she has everything she needs in one place.
For example, the fields she has added to her checkout include “How many adults will be staying with your group?” and “Do you require an additional camp cot?” She also includes a text field for notes: “If you have any questions please note them below.”
The multiple-choice questions are set up with dropdown menus, which limit responses to only what River Events and Rentals is capable of providing. For instance, the adult group size question has a maximum number that matches the number of guests they can host. This prevents overbooking and ensures that customers can only select options that fit within the business’s capacity.
This achieves:
-
Collecting group size details automatically, with limits that match capacity
-
Knowing if extra equipment like a camp cot is required
-
Fewer emails back and forth before check-in
-
A better guest experience with personalized service
With the right checkout fields in place, Shandy avoids last-minute surprises. The practical benefit is that River Events and Rentals can prepare each booking confidently, knowing they have the right information at the right time.
Bringing it all together
From Excel spreadsheets to a full-featured event rental software solution, River Events and Rentals’ journey shows how Booqable helps small rental businesses grow. By keeping inventory and orders organized, building a tent rental website with event rental templates, and using custom checkout fields, the business turned an idea into something her family can be proud of.
